Deliberate damage to a cable or pipeline laid on the seabed, whose uncertain attribution decides whether the war exclusion applies.
Telecommunication cables and energy pipelines laid on the seabed run for thousands of kilometers, unguarded, precisely charted in public documents and reachable by submarine equipment that has become commonplace. Deliberate damage to them produces modest physical loss relative to its consequences, and the insurance difficulty lies not in valuing the loss but in characterizing it. Policies distinguish vandalism, which is covered, terrorism, covered by a specific extension, and the act of a state or foreign power, excluded by the war clause. Yet attributing damage on the seabed is technically very hard and politically constrained, so an investigation can remain inconclusive for years. The insured then finds itself in a position where payment depends on a fact nobody can establish, and the burden of proving the exclusion, which falls on the insurer, becomes the decisive point of the file far more than the true origin of the damage.
The explosions of 26 September 2022 on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea damaged three of the four lines. Investigations opened by several coastal states did not produce a concordant public attribution in the years that followed.
subsea sabotage, atteinte aux infrastructures sous-marines, sabotage de gazoduc