Russia's Northern Sea Route Shipping Safety Efforts Inadequate Thus Far
Mikhail Krutikhin: In perilous waters
It was a close miss. The Norvik tanker sent out a mayday signal after it was hit and disabled by a floating ice field in Arctic in the early days of September. The 133 meter long 6.403 dwt vessel under the Russian flag, loaded with diesel fuel, was passing the Matisen Strait in the Nordenskiöld Archipelago.
Luckily, the hole in the hull was not large enough to cause an environmental disaster, and the Norvik crew decided to steer the ship from the Kara Sea toward Murmansk at the slowest possible speed of just four miles an hour.
Nobody could have saved the people from the sinking ship, and no facilities exist along the Northeastern Passage, called the North Sea Route in Russia, to localize and eliminate an oil spill. Even though navigation in these Arctic seas is tentatively recognized as feasible for three or four months a year, shippers make the decision to take this route at their discretion and assume immense risks.
Can the dangerous voyage get insured? According to experts of Arctis Knowledge Hub, it can. This is what they say: ‘The Russian as well as the global marine insurance market was willing and able to underwrite navigational and related risks, provided that appropriate and adequate information structures of the risks involved could be presented to underwriters. However, the research carried out by INSROP [International Northern Sea Route Programme] identified that the claims would be higher than those experienced in southern waters. In particular, wreck removal, pollution salvage and towage, cargo, and crew claims was of particular concern. Estimates showed that the total insurance rate would be expensive for the ship owners and almost twice the comparable insurance rate prevailing in shipping via the Suez Canal.’
Does Russia do anything to make the Northern Sea Route better equipped to mitigate the risks and ensure safe navigation? After all, some politically important projects—such as Yamal LNG or upstream developments along the Arctic coast—hope to transport production to Asia by sea and save on the voyage length.
So far, the efforts of Moscow have been inadequate, unless blessing of the route by Russian Orthodox priests is considered as a safety measure.
The government has adopted a program of building new nuclear icebreakers because only one existing vessel of this type will remain operational in 2021 after old icebreakers are decommissioned. Unfortunately, four scrapped ones will be replaced with just two new ships by that moment (one of them is actually being built.) From this perspective, it is difficult to secure multiple convoys for cargo traffic even during the short summer season.
The navigation support along the shoreline is not in the making either. Instead, the Russian government has decided to boost its military bases in Arctic rather than organize civil support of the route.
It seems that shippers from Europe to Asia can only hope for a climate change, which may melt the ice around the North Pole and open a safe passage for them.
Mikhail Krutikhin
Published with the kind permission of RusEnergy. Mikhail Krutikhin is with RusEnergy, an independent privately-run company established in 2000 by a group of Russian experts with a long experience in consulting and publishing business. Based in Moscow, it specializes in monitoring, analysis and consulting on oil and gas industry of Russia, Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine.