Shipwrecks and World War Two bombs threaten £6 bn pipeline

When Sweden scuttled 20 huge wooden warships more than 250 years ago, it was seen as a desperate measure to block the enemy Danish fleet in the great Nordic wars (1700-1720). Now those same wrecks could scuttle the key component of a European energy plan - the construction of a 1.200 km (746-mile) gas pipeline along the cluttered floor of the Baltic Sea.

Machu project
The wrecks are lying within the MACHU testarea of the island of Rügen. MACHU is developing an international GIS and database of shipwrecks and other archeological sites on the seabed. In the Baltic area the MACHU partners include Germany, Poland and Sweden. This kind of infrastructural work is just what the MACHU project is all about. The MACHU GIS is a tool to help planners and policymakers. MACHU not only visualizes were the known Underwater Cultural Heritage is, but can also predict were there might be UCH. In this way MACHU can help to make decisions about (infrastructural) work on the seabed.

Ammunition
Russia and Germany are building the pipeline to avoid the political problems of transporting gas overland. The seabed route, known as Nord Stream, is turning into an obstacle course of a different kind. Not only do 100,000 tonnes of unexploded Second World War munition lie scattered along the route, but the German Navy is concerned that one of its live shells might hit the pipeline and set off an explosion during Baltic exercises.
Meanwhile, ecologists are protesting at the disruption to fish breeding grounds and the Swedes fear that Russian submarines guarding the pipeline might spy - as they have done in the past - in their waters.

Shipbarrier
In 1715 the Swedes filled 20 of their largest vessels with stones, sailed them southeast of the island of Rügen, which now belongs to Germany, and sank them. The result was a chain of jagged boobytraps more than a kilometre long, that served as a frontline defence against the Danes. The wrecks were discovered in 1990 and declared to be a valuable maritime archaelogical site. This is precisely the spot where the Nord Stream pipeline is supposed to rise and come on land. The gas pumped from Vyborg in Russia, close to the Finnish border, will be pumped under high pressure until it reaches Greifswald, close to Rügen.

“We're going to send divers down to the wrecks in the coming weeks,” said Jens Lange, who is in charge of gaining planning permission for the pipeline in German waters. “I'm expecting to recover one of the wrecks next year.”
His plan is to make a hole in the tight chain of shipwrecks and allow space for the pipeline to run past. The operation is not as straightforward as it sounds. Removing one out of twenty ships could destabilise the whole rotting fleet. And the construction work on the pipeline could lead to their disintegration.

More wrecks
The operation will be paid for by the Russo-German consortium, half owned by Gazprom, which is aiming to complete the pipeline in 2011. This deadline appears to many experts to be unrealistic because the seabed of the Baltic has been poorly charted. The pipeline is supposed to run past the Swedish island of Gotland, where about 100 wrecks have been found. Historical sources indicate that 2,500 ships have sunk around the island in the past 250 years.

“These are highly sensitive waters,” Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish Environment Minister, said. “We need as much information as we can get before we can approve such a huge project.

Source: Times online

related link: Nord Stream