A Finnish company plans to establish a railway to connect north Finland and Norway’s Kirkenes port. This aims to link potential Arctic shipping routes, while the cost of this project is estimated to be between 3-5 billion euros.
Namely, Reuters reports that Finest Bay Area Development has signed an MoU with Norwegian Sør-Varanger Utvikling to come up with a plan to construct a railway. They will also investigate its impact on the environment, society and the economy.
This railway would connect Finland to the Northeast Passage, while also providing a faster trade route between Asian and European markets.
In addition to this project, Finest Bay Area Development wants to build an undersea tunnel between Helsinki and Tallinn in Estonia. The project has received a provisional 15 billion euros in financing from China’s Touchstone Capital Partners.
The Port of Kirkenes is located above the Arctic Circle, 350 km from the northernmost parts of Finland’s railway network. The line of the railway could begin at Kemijarvi or Kolari in Finland.
During 2018, a Finnish government study decided that a railway connection to Kirkenes would need at least 15 years to build and would not be economically viable.
Regarding the Arctic, scientists believe it accommodated about 13% of the global untapped reserves of oil, as well as 30% of its undiscovered reserves of natural gas. It also contains massive deposits of minerals such as zinc, iron and rare earth metals, becoming an area with strategic significance.
