After the explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, no escaping gas can be seen on the water surface. During overflights on Thursday and Friday, the gas leak in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone was no longer visible, the Swedish coast guard announced on Friday afternoon. After a previous observation, she last spoke on Wednesday that the remaining outlet from Nord Stream 2 would still affect an area around ten meters wide.

Meanwhile, Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has dismissed a report that Sweden no longer wants to investigate the gas leak at the damaged Nord Stream pipelines with Denmark and Germany. “As I understand it, that’s not true. We work together with Denmark and Germany on this issue,” Andersson said in a TV interview with Reuters news agency in Berlin on Friday evening. “The Swedish investigation is still ongoing. We quickly got into the water for investigations and brought material up. The investigation is still ongoing.” Earlier, the “Spiegel” reported that Sweden allegedly refused a joint investigation for security reasons. Andersson said she did not know whether Russia was behind the sabotage of the pipelines.

Andersson said the incident shows that EU countries are vulnerable in terms of infrastructure, not only in the energy sector but also in trains like in Germany. “But at Nord Stream the most important lesson is: We should not be dependent on fossil energy from countries that we should not be dependent on.” This includes Russia, but this also applies to other countries that she did not name. The conversion to a green energy industry must be accelerated.

At the end of September, a total of four leaks in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines were discovered after explosions near the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm, two of them each in the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden. Danish authorities had already announced at the beginning of the month that no more gas was leaking at the two points within their economic zone. Sabotage is suspected to be behind the leaks. The Attorney General is investigating. Russia denies being responsible for the leaks.

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