A bomb threat against a natural gas processing facility in central Norway forced the site’s evacuation and briefly halted operations, police said Thursday.
They later declared that the threat wasn’t credible.
The incident came amid heightened security on key energy, internet and power infrastructures following last month’s underwater explosions that ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea that were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.
The blasts and ruptures happened in international waters off the Baltic coastline of both Sweden and Denmark but within the countries’ exclusive economic zone. The damaged Nord Stream pipelines discharged huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the air.
Gas from Norway’s Ormen Lange deepwater facility off the coast — which supplies around 20 percent of U.K.’s gas needs — is piped along the seabed to the onshore Nyhamna facility, which was evacuated. The gas is then exported to the U.K.
Police said there was “no evidence that the bomb threat against the Ormen Lange facility was real.”
“The perpetrator is known to the police for similar circumstances, and the case is being investigated further,” police spokesman Per Åge Ferstad said.
Norwegian broadcaster NRK later said a man, known for having made similar threats over several years, had been detained. NRK added that man, who was not identified, had previously been convicted in several similar cases.
Nyhamna is 233 miles northwest of Oslo. It is Norway’s second-largest gas field and is operated by the Norwegian branch of Shell.
Shell later told Norwegian news agency NTB that workers had returned to the site and production had resumed.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
