Given what several NATO country-members see as a growing threat to critical maritime infrastructure, Germany and Norway will formally ask NATO to coordinate efforts to protect undersea pipelines and other such infrastructure, some two months after explosions ripped holes in the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, disabling them.

“Our goal must be to quickly achieve good, continuous and pragmatic international coordination among all relevant actors to protect this infrastructure and also to ensure a rapid response capability in case of emergency,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a news conference in Berlin. He said the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines had revealed the extent of the risk for Europe.

Denmark, Germany and Sweden, all NATO members or in the process of becoming one, opened separate investigations into the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September of this year. The Swedish investigation made public on 18 November detected residue of explosives and concluded that “grievous sabotage” caused the breakage.  The findings in Denmark were in concert with those in Sweden. Germany has yet to make its report on the matter public.

Jonas Gahr Støre, Prime Minister of Norway, said the idea behind the coordination hub would be to protect that oil and gas infrastructure and, by extension, the economies of the countries involved.

“It’s about safety for energy installations,” Mr. Støre said. “It’s about gas pipelines, it’s about telecommunications infrastructure, it’s about fiber-optic infrastructure and others. That means we need a coordinated, joint effort to ensure security for that infrastructure.