Our Arctic Neighbors: Russian tankers plan voyage via Northern Sea Route

Russian oil tankers will make their maiden voyage from a port in the White Sea under Russian command to Southeast Asia via the Northern Sea Route this fall, a deputy Russian transport minister said per a June 11 report in RIA Novosti.

“A test passage of two oil tankers, accompanied by an icebreaker, will be made in the Arctic this fall. This will be a commercial voyage from the White Sea port of Vitino to the Southeast Asian countries,” Viktor Olersky told an expert at an Arctic council meeting.

The idea behind the voyage is to attract the attention of freight forwarders to the advantages of the Northern Sea Route, the article said, the route being the shortest seaway from the ports of Western Europe and Russia to the Far East and Southeast Asia.

Olersky said that in the future, the Northern Sea Route could replace the much longer passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Suez Canal.

Per RIA Novosti, Olersky said Russia could use the route to deliver oil and gas from its Arctic fields to the United States and Western Europe and to transport fertilizers to China and East Asia.

The catch? Funding for transportation infrastructure in the Arctic has ground to a halt and funds for modern hydrographic equipment and cartographic complexes are no longer being allocated by the government.

—Petroleum News