Not through Canada's Northwest Passage, reports David Ljunggren for Reuters: Navigating the Northwest Passage (via Globe and Mail, October 4, 2007):
The highly unpredictable nature of Arctic ice, a total lack of infrastructure, narrow channels, relatively shallow waters, increased insurance costs and the unwillingness of firms to take risks are all deterrents....
...merchant ships with deep draughts through icy waters that are uncharted...
Even if the ice does melt in summer, the season would be very brief, perhaps from late June to late September. Then the long dark winter starts drawing in and ice forms again.
And just because there is no ice in the passage one summer is no guarantee it will not return the next...
“The big fear is that you get up there and you can't get through because you've got a block point … and then you've risked the customer's cargo and have to reroute him back through Panama and he's not going to take that risk.”
The passage is in fact five different routes through dozens of rocky islands and narrow waterways. The southern route, the one least likely to be affected by ice, is also one of the most challenging and not best suited to enormous ships that need plenty of water to manoeuvre.
“The Northwest Passage in its entirety has often been described at shipping conferences … as a rock pile. It's very tricky navigation through most of it,” he said. And if a ship got into trouble, the rescue effort would be massively complex and costly, said Bob Gorman of Enfotec, which provides ice navigation services in the Arctic.
“It's just not a route well travelled … there are no tugboats nearby, there are no shipyards nearby, there are no repair facilities, there is no port of safe refuge. You are really out in the wilderness,” he said.
Another challenge is the slowly rotating permanent ice cap at the top of the world, which is made up of diamond-hard multiyear ice that can easily tear holes in ships. Chunks of this ice, which are hard to spot, occasionally make it into the passage and are expected to be more frequent as the Arctic warms and the giant cap slowly comes apart.
“We believe that the last ice in the Arctic to melt, whenever it is … is likely going to be this ice,” said John Falkingham of the Canadian Ice Service.
Using the Northwest Passage is also hampered by bureaucracy. Canada claims control of the waters in the passage – something the United States disputes...
After a while this has an Odyssey or Jason and the Argonauts quality to it, although the classical heros never had to deal with bureaucracy.
Cross-posted to Arctic Economics.
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