It is apparently happening far
faster than I imagined. This article
also gives us a good sense of sailing times and the actual size of the window
of opportunity.
It is correct to say that right
now, the North Eastern passage is clearly viable and will likely remain
so. At worst, sporadic ice breaker
support may be necessary. If and when the arctic climate actually reverts to
ice accumulating mode we may actually get a few years of grace. In the meantime the contraction of the ice
mass is continuing apace and assures us of generally clear sailing conditions
from July through October.
The eight day sailing time is
excellent as that gives the operator plenty of leeway in planning his
trip. He knows several days ahead of his
passage time and available weather is normally good enough to predict anything
like an unusual ice mass getting in the way.
The North West
The take home is that the first
commercial shippers have made the passage and you can be sure that they will
all be trying it next year. If that
works out as well as it appears to look, then those ice reinforced vessels will
be immediately ordered and become a standard requirement.
I suspect that tanker traffic
will be restricted to the North Eastern passage were one is not navigating
through narrow channels, but instead only the open sea.
In reality, the unimaginable has
happened and the two legendary passages are really open for business. It is now safe enough.
Ice coverage fell to below 2007
coverage levels and the actual ice mass appears to be much lower and is now
accelerating its decline to reach a new equilibrium with the annual production.
Melting Arctic ice clears the way for supertanker voyages
Scandinavian shipowners say cargo routes through the Arctic, made
possible by warmer temperatures, would save money and emissions
The image above was made from observations collected by the Advanced
Microwave Scanning Radiometer and shows the extent of sea ice melt. The yellow
outline shows the median minimum ice extent for 1979/2000. Photograph:
Aqua/NASA
Supertankers and giant cargo ships could next year travel regularly
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic to save time, money
and emissions, say Scandinavian shipowners.
New data from companies who have taken advantage of receding Arctic sea
ice this year to complete several voyages across the north of Russia shows that the "northern sea
route" can save even a medium-sized bulk carrier 18 days and 580
tonnes of bunker fuel on a journey between northern Norway
and China
Even bigger fuel and time savings have been reported this week by
Danish shipping company Nordic Bulk Carriers which says it saved a third of its usual
costs and nearly half the time in shipping goods to China
via the Arctic .
The route, which cuts around 4,000 nautical miles off the southern Suez route from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, has barely needed an ice-breaker since July as annual sea
ice melted to a near
record low extent. "We saved 1,000 tonnes of bunker fuel – nearly
3,000 tonnes of CO2 – on one journey between Murmansk
and north China ," said
Christian Bonfils, a director of Nordic Bulk Carriers in Oslo
The shipowners, who anticipate that the northern route could gradually
be opened for four to six months a year as air and sea temperatures increase,
are exploring the possibility of regular summer passages through the Arctic ocean . This could save them €180,000-300,000 on
each voyage, they say.
"The window for sailing the route is four months now, but the
Russians say it is seven [if the cargo ships are accompanied by Russian atomic
icebreakers]. When we can save 22 days on transportation, it is very good
business for us," said Bonfils.
Apart from time savings, the shipowners can avoid Somali pirates and
the high insurance premiums they attract if their ships pass through the Suez canal .
The Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, last week predicted
that the route would soon rival the Suez canal as a quicker trade link
from Europe to Asia . "The Northern sea
route will rival traditional trade lanes in service fees, security and
quality," he told a conference organised by the Russian Geographical
Society in Arkhangelsk
This is seen as wildly optimistic by the Scandinavian shipowners, who
are nevertheless encouraged by the speed of change in high latitudes. The
Arctic was crossed in a record eight days in August by an STI Heritage
tanker on a route between the US and Thailand, and on 20 August, a160,000 tonne supertanker with 120,000 tonnes of gas made the
passage, becoming the largest commercial ship ever to sail the route.
The route, which used to be known as the North-east passage, runs along
the Russian Arctic coast from Murmansk on the
Barents Sea, along Siberia, to the Bering Strait .
Environment groups have warned that an Arctic shipping rush could accelerate
global warming. While they accept that ships would burn less fuel and emit less
CO2, they fear oil spills and other maritime accidents, as well as "black
carbon", the sooty residue of partly burned fuel which is deposited on ice
and is a short-lived but powerful "forcer" of climate change.
"The prospect of the creeping industrialisation of the high north
is deeply worrying. More ships bring more chance of major accidents and will
mean more climate pollutants on the back of more melting of the ice," said
Ben Ayliffe, Arctic campaigner with Greenpeace.
But shipowners cautioned that special ice-strengthened ships were
needed and it is too early to build ships especially for the journey.
In a further sign that the Arctic was
opening up, Russian atomic icebreakers received 15 requests to escort Arctic
voyages in 2011, against four in 2010.
Canadian and American maritime experts have estimated that 2% of global shipping could
be diverted to the Arctic by 2030, rising to 5% by 2050.
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