A sober look at the Northern Sea Route

Claes Lykke Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute has written an excellent, short (8 pages) up to date (2008) status report on Russia's Northern Sea Route:The Northern Sea Route.

The Russian's opened the Northern Sea Route to transits by foreign ships in 1991.  It has not been used much (I'm only pulling his discussion of cargo carrying transits here, not his discussion of local traffic or non-commercial and cruise ship transits):

As for transit traffic, there was a burst of Russian cargo vessels transiting the route in the
years 1989-1995. This was caused by special exchange rate conditions, and when these
normalized, transit traffic stopped. Since 1997, there have been no cargo vessel transits,
except one isolated occurrence in 2001. Around the turn of the century, Japan considered
using the NSR to transport its reprocessed nuclear fuel from reprocessing facilities in Europe,
but those plans seem to have been abandoned. While there have been transits by research
vessels, military vessels and even yachts, it is notable that there has not been one single
‘ordinary’, commercial transit by a non-Russian vessel since the route was opened in 1991.

And there is unlikely to be much traffic soon:

...comparing the NSR with the traditional Suez Canal route, the research also showed that ‘ordinary’ transit traffic would not be commercially viable under current economic and climatic conditions.

First of all, costs of building and operating ice-strengthened vessels suitable for the NSR, are considerable higher than of ordinary vessels. Secondly, NSR vessels have severe size restrictions, and economies-of-scale cannot be realized. Maximum draft is 12.5 m due to the shallow and often unavoidable straits between the New Siberian Islands, and maximum beam is 30 m, as vessels cannot be wider than the ice-breaker in which path it must sometimes follow. This restricts NSR vessel size to around 50,000 dwt – much smaller than vessels that can use the Suez Canal route. Thirdly, while punctuality is essential for most types of intercontinental shipping, NSR shipping would never be able to run on schedules as ice conditions are unpredictable, even during the short summer season. Finally, there was the problem of the high cost and uncertain availability of Russian ice-breaker assistance. As a result, for the time being, the international shipping industry lost interest in the NSR as a transit route.

Russia has the largest ice-breaker fleet in the world, but its getting older.  A potential shortage of ice-breaker capacity makes transit activity less likely:

The lack of ice-breaker capacity will furthermore make NSR transit traffic more unrealistic, at
least in a short- and mid-term perspective. Even though a prerequisite for commercial transit
traffic is that cargo vessels must be able to operate largely without costly ice-breaker
assistance, it is paradoxically also necessary that a minimum ice-breaker capacity is available
in case of emergencies and extreme conditions.

High fees for available ice breakers don't help.  Climate change may change things, but Ragner doesn't expect quick change:

The diminishing Arctic sea ice cover is a fact, while the pace of the process is still uncertain.
But the Arctic Ocean is gradually becoming more accessible, and shipping in the region is
bound to increase. We are already seeing more regional traffic, mostly related to the
development and export of petroleum resources. Other export cargoes, imports to the Arctic
settlements and cruise activities may also increase. Later, when the ‘summer window of
opportunity’ widens, occasional transits may be seen. Under the most radical climate change
scenarios, it will probably still take around 20-30 years from now until conditions have
become suitable for such occasional transits. Large-scale, year-round transit operations are
hardly possible before the ice cover has disappeared for most of the year, and this does not
seem realistic in at least 40-60 years from now.

Cruise ship transits of the Northern Sea Route (or Northeast Passage) are available.  REI Adventures and Quark expeditions offered one this past summer on the Kapitan Khlebnikov: Arctic Cruise Adventure: Northeast Passage.

Comments

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