The history of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) began in 1932, when the icebreaking steamer Alexander Sibiryakov was the first in the world to complete all the route from the Barents Sea to Chukotka in one navigation. Dozens of Arctic explorers gave their lives paving the way through the northern seas in order to make it happen.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Northern Sea Route was called the Northeast Passage. It was possible to get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean not only along the northern coast of Eurasia, but also by circumnavigating the coast of North America – the Northwest Passage, but this route is less promising. With the same length (about 5,400 km), the ice situation here is more severe, some sections of the route are blocked by perennial pack ice. Therefore, all the searches for the shortest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean were mainly conducted through the Northeast Passage. And in order for ships to deliver cargo along this route year-round, Russia had to create the world’s first and largest icebreaking fleet. It was only with the advent of powerful nuclear icebreakers that the Northern Sea Route took shape as a national transport artery and now claims to be a transit of global importance and the safest route.
Now then, the risks to the safety of navigation in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea due to Houthi attacks have forced many major transportation companies to reduce traffic in the region and redirect their vessels around Africa. For its part, the Panama Canal, due to the reduction in precipitation in recent years and the drying up of Gatun Lake, which feeds the Canal, allows fewer and fewer ships to pass – instead of the usual 36 vessels per day, now only 30-32 ships are able to pass through.
With the complication of global maritime logistics on the main transport routes, the development of the Northern Sea Route along the northern coast of Russia is becoming a national priority for Moscow. However, the development of this large-scale Northern Sea Route project is facing numerous challenges.
There were periods when the annual freight turnover in the 1990s did not exceed 2 million tons, and in the early 2000s, due to economic difficulties, almost no icebreakers were built.
Currently, the Russian icebreaking fleet includes about 40 Arc 6 class icebreakers, of which 8 are nuclear-powered, including 4 of the newest – “Arctic”, “Sibir”, “Ural” and “Yakutia”, each with a capacity of 60 MW and capable of breaking through 3-meter thick ice.
Two nuclear-powered icebreakers are currently being built on the stocks of the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg: the “Chukotka”, scheduled to be commissioned in 2026, the “Leningrad” – in 2028, and the “Stalingrad” nuclear-powered icebreaker, scheduled to be commissioned in 2030, was laid this year.
Thanks to the work of the latest Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers on the Northern Sea Route, it was possible to increase cargo transportation five times compared to the Soviet era and achieve a cargo turnover of 37.9 million tons and 92 transit passages by the end of 2024.
At the same time, however, the goal set by the Russian President in 2019 to increase the volume of cargo transportation along the Northern Sea Route to 80 million tons in 2024 has not been reached. This is primarily due to the significant overestimation of the Northern Sea Route’s capabilities, as well as it was also impossible to predict the downturn in the global economy caused by the pandemic, and the extent of the impact of Western sanctions on Russia, when the world’s largest container companies such as the Danish Maersk abandoned the use of the Northern Sea Route, which led to a sharp reduction in transit transportation.
That said, it goes without question what to transport along the Northern Sea Route if projects related to energy production are implemented. According to Russian experts, this is primarily Arctic LNG, which can supply 20 million tons of LNG to the NSR cargo turnover, while Severnaya Zvezda can add another 10 million tons of coal from the Syradasayskoye field in Taimyr. For its part, Rosneft, through its Vostok Oil company, is able to supply 100 million tons of oil per year, having proven oil reserves in the region of over 3 billion tons.
However, the question remains how to transport this energy raw material along the NSR. If everything is more or less clear with the icebreaking fleet and plans for its further development, then the three-year deadline delay for commissioning of the nuclear-powered icebreaker of the Leader series (specifically the “Rossiya”), with the 120 MW capacity and the ability to overcome 5-meters thick ice, pushes back the possibility of all year-round navigation in the eastern part of the NSR.
The fact is that the ice conditions and the thickness of the ice in the winter and spring months (4-5 meters) in this part of the Northern Sea Route do not allow even the newest nuclear-powered icebreakers of the “Arctic” type to operate in such ice conditions.
As for the tanker fleet and ice-class LNG carriers, the count on the largest Zvezda shipyard has not yet been justified. In December 2024, the first ice-class LNG carrier “Alexey Kosygin” was set afloat, and three more LNG carriers in varying degrees of completion are next in line.
As for the Aframax type ice class tankers, since 2021, only five such carriers have been manufactured for Rosneft. When planning the construction of the Zvezda shipyard in the Far East, as it turned out later, they took an unjustified risk, hoping for the opportunity to benefit from successful work in broad international coordination, including through access to the latest global marine technologies and the supply of ship equipment not manufactured in Russia from partners from unfriendly countries.
The imposition of sanctions against Zvezda brought down these plans and led to the termination of supplies of rolled steel from South Korea (60 percent of all necessary rolled products), cryogenic membrane systems for storing and transporting LNG in gas carriers from the French company GTT, rotary steering columns from the American General Electric and dual-fuel marine engines from the Finnish company Vartasila.
All the above forced Russian companies to create their own similar equipment in order not to completely shut down the shipyard, although this affected the ship production schedule. Thus, import substitution of critical technologies had to be carried out without regard to the intellectual property of Western and eastern partners.
There is yet another problem for the development of the NSR, which is the insufficient number of equipped Auxiliary ports along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. Currently, only the ports of Naryan-Mar, Dickson, Sabetta, Khatanga, Tiksi and Pevek are operating here. There are huge distances between them and it is difficult for passing ships to receive the necessary assistance, for example, in case of loss of vessel movement progess, fire, the need for urgent medical assistance to crew members and their evacuation to the mainland, etc.
As a result, the NSR is developing, but much more slowly than would be desirable in Moscow. The potential of this route is huge. In addition to energy resources, there is also the prospect of increasing cargo traffic due to goods delivered to the NSR using the river fleet. However, often the bottom in the estuary does not deepen, the port infrastructure is catastrophically outdated and does not develop, the corresponding fleet is not replenished with new vessels.
That said, the Arctic is of aa particular interest not only to Russia, but also to China. Currently, two polar stations are operating there, which are exploring, among others, the possibility of using the Transpolar Sea Route (TSR) as an alternative to the NSR. This route is 1,500 km shorter than the Northern Sea Route and passes through the North Pole in neutral waters, but this is where all the advantages of the TSR end.
The TSR is set to pass through the existing Arctic (Polar) cap, where the ice thickness reaches 5 meters. Moreover, it is impossible to build a port infrastructure along the TSR to support vessel en route, since the route runs in the middle of the ocean.
In addition, China does not have an icebreaking fleet, and the only diesel-electric icebreaker built in Shanghai in 2019, the Snow Dragon -2, is too low–powered – only 7 MW and is capable of overcoming 1.2 meters thick ice, leaving only a 28-meter wide ice passage. According to experts, this is clearly not enough for the mass use of the TSR, so this route cannot compete with the Russian Northern Sea Route even in the future.
Comments