Amidst Russia-NATO Tensions, Drone Spotted at North Sea Gas Platform
On Monday, as NATO ramped up preparedness for ongoing Russian drone and aircraft incursions, workers at Norway's Sleipner gas field reported sighting an unidentified drone. It is not the first time that suspicious drone activity has been spotted in the area, but the approach is under investigation because of elevated concerns about hybrid warfare threats - and the value of the installation.
The four-platform Sleipner complex handles output from five mature fields, including tiebacks. The installation dates back to the 1990s, and is still actively contributing to Norway's gas production; it feeds into the Gassled Area D dry gas offshore pipeline network, which serves customers in Europe. Taken as a whole, including other fields, the Gassled supply system is a strategic asset: Norway's offshore sector provides more than 30 percent of all natural gas used by consumers in the UK and EU combined.
Personnel aboard Sleipner A notified shoreside staff at Equinor on Monday night that a suspicious drone had been sighted near the platform, an operations manager confirmed to VG and NRK. No further details were available, but he said that these matters are taken seriously, and the company is following its notification protocols. The platform's operations are unaffected, he told NRK.
"We encourage our employees to have a certain level of vigilance given the circumstances we are in. It has been like this for a while," Equinor spokesman Magnus Frantzen Eidsvold told NRK.
Sleipner is in the middle of the North Sea, halfway between Norway and Scotland - more than 100 nautical miles beyond the reach of a typical consumer drone. However, it is not the first time that a drone has been spotted near Sleipnir. In October 2022, amidst heightened tensions over the then-new Russian invasion of Ukraine, workers on the Sleipner platform reported a "helicopter-style" drone near the facility. The Norwegian Police Security Service opened an investigation into a possible espionage threat in connection with the case, and drone detection sensors were installed to identify any approaching UAVs.
Then and now, the drone sightings offshore are accompanied by concerning drone threats over land. On Sunday, one Norwegian airplane flight departing Oslo had to return to the airport because of suspicious drone sightings on its route. Over the past week, unauthorized drones shut down the Copenhagen airport in a coordinated raid - and several Russia-linked ships are suspected of serving as possible launch pads for the operation.
Top image: The Sleipner A platform (Bair175 / CC BY SA 3.0)
