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Cargo volume on Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) is expected to reach 32 million tons in 2020 according to the latest forecasts. Traffic is up from just 2.8 million tons in 2013 and 18m tons in 2018.
“The plan for this year’s freight traffic along the Northern Sea Route was 29 million tons, but today our forecast is that it will exceed 32 million tons,” Alexey Likhachev, the head of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation and operators of the country’s icebreaker fleet, Rosatom, said earlier this week.
The development of the route is a national priority with strong support from President Putin, who sees the route as a key for development of the Russian Arctic and the Far East and wants to develop it into a global competitive transport route.
The stark increase in traffic over the past ten years comes primarily from two large hydrocarbon developments: Gazprom’s Novy Port crude oil project and Novatek’s Yamal LNG project. Both are located on the Yamal peninsula and utilize ice-hardened vessels to export crude oil and LNG via the NSR.
Novy Port produced 7.7 million tons of crude oil in 2019 and Yamal LNG produced 18.4 million tons. Combined the two operations account for 26.1m tons or around 80 percent of cargo volume on the route.
No ice means no ice-class needed
For most of the year Novatek relies on a fleet of twelve Arc7 icebreaking LNG carriers to travel through the ice-covered waters along the NSR. However, in recent years ice has receded so much that even conventional vessels can venture into the Arctic during the late summer and early fall.
Just last week it was announced that Arctic sea ice reached its second-lowest ever extent.
The waters along the Russian coastline were completely ice free during September and a non-ice strengthened LNG carrier is currently passing through the Bering Strait on route to the port of Sabetta and the Yamal LNG project.
