This year has been a record as well as an ice breaker in the Russian Arctic
This year has been a record as well as an ice breaker in the Russian Arctic. On departing Murmansk at the end of June with a cargo of 70,000 tonnes of condensate for the eastbound voyage to China, the Panamax product tanker Perseverance became the earliest commercial vessel in the season to make a transit of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) along Russia’s Arctic coast.
Several weeks later, in late July, STI Heritage, a tanker similar to Perseverance, made the fastest ever NSR passage by a cargo ship, sailing that part of her overall voyage from Murmansk to Map Ta Phut in Thailand in just eight days. She was carrying 61,000 tonnes of condensate.
On 20 August 2011 another tanker departed Murmansk eastbound with a cargo of condensate en route to another record. Carrying 120,000 tonnes of the bulk liquid, Vladimir Tikhonov became the first Suezmax tanker and the largest commercial ship to sail the route.
The Vladimir Tikhonov voyage was a much slower one than the two earlier tanker transits as it was used to study the potential for transporting large consignments of Arctic oil and gas eastwards. The data collected by the Suezmax tanker will be useful in planning future shipments by large tankers including, possibly, LNG carriers. Vladimir Tikhonov, with the assistance of two icebreaker escorts, sailed in the challenging high Arctic latitudes to the north of the Novosibirsk Islands along a sea lane where the Arctic Ocean water depths are amongst the greatest and ice conditions remain relatively harsh even in the summer.
Perseverance, STI Heritage and Vladimir Tikhonov are all ice class 1A tankers and all were on charter to Novatek, Russia’s second largest gas company, for their NSR voyages. The firm is planning to ship a total of 420,000 tonnes of gas condensate – six times the 2010 volume – eastbound along the NSR during this year’s summer season.
Russia is touting the logistics advantages of the Northern Sea Route. Sailing the passage cuts the 13,000-mile journey from Rotterdam to Yokohama via the Suez Canal by about one-third. NSR not only saves time and fuel compared to the traditional route, it also misses out the Gulf of Aden piracy danger spot.
However the biggest driver for making greater use of the route is the wealth of untapped Russian oil and gas resources in the Arctic region, coupled with rising energy demands in Asia. It is estimated that the Arctic shelf in the region holds in excess of 100 billion tonnes of oil equivalent. Two of the most ambitious projects currently in the planning stage are Gazprom’s Shtokman LNG scheme in the Barents Sea and the Novatek proposal for the Yamal LNG export terminal to exploit its Kara Sea gas reserves.
Two decades ago the idea of shipping volumes of oil and LNG eastbound along Russia’s northern coast would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction, but climatic conditions are changing. Satellite observations of the polar ice cap have been underway for the last 30 years and during this period significant reductions in the minimum ice extent at the end of Summer have been recorded. The cover has declined from around 8 million km2 in the early 1980s to an historic minimum of less than 4.24 million km2 in 2007. The last five Summers have been the five minimum ice extent Summers on record.
Due to the thinning of the polar ice cap the NSR is now effectively open to shipping, with the assistance of icebreaker escorts, each year from July to November. Prime minister Vladimir Putin has stated that, if the proposed energy projects in Russia’s northern seas come to fruition, the country is committed to keeping the NSR open on a year-round basis as much as is practicable to provide the option of eastbound deliveries to Asia. This will intensify the requirements placed on the country’s icebreaker escort service.
A handful of ice class Super 1A double acting tankers and container ships have been built for the Russian Arctic and these vessels have icebreaking capabilities. However ice class 1A ships do not and Russia requires ships sailing the NSR to have icebreaker escorts. Ships are usually accompanied by two icebreakers but in benign conditions one will sometimes drop away.
Atomflot maintains the Russian fleet of Arctic icebreakers and is poised to spend USD 5.3 billion by 2020 on three new nuclear and six diesel-powered icebreakers to replace ageing vessels in its 15-ship fleet. The icebreaker newbuilding programme will go ahead but the economics of constructing the new vessels will be significantly enhanced if the planned large oil and gas export projects, and hence a healthy level of associated icebreaker escort fees, materialise.
On the commercial side, a positive outcome for the envisaged projects would require the construction over the next decade of 40 ice-resistant offshore oil platforms and 14 for gas as well as 55 oil shuttle and storage tankers and 20 LNG carriers of superior ice class. These major investments would need to be backed by a string of specialised support ships, including tugs, supply vessels and rescue craft, designed for operations in extreme cold and ice-covered waters. Appropriate port facilities, navigational infrastructure, salvage capabilities and mobile search and rescue stations would also have to be provided.
Conditions this year have been conducive to the setting of records. Last month Russia’s Federal Hydrometeorological and Environmental Monitoring Service reported that “almost the entire NSR was open to icebreaker-free shipping” as of early August. Confirming that the ice extent was as much as 56% less than average in some areas, including the southwestern Kara Sea, the Moscow-based agency stated that “very easy” sailing will persist through September.
It is only 14 years since the 16,000 DWT product tanker Uikku became the first vessel to make a commercial voyage along the NSR. Shipping operations in the Russian Arctic have come a long way since then but the provision of a year-round NSR service, including for a fleet of icebreaking LNG carriers, will present major challenges.
Russia is gearing up to meet these challenges and those responsible for project development are taking it as a good omen that this summer, for only the second time since satellite observations began, both the NSR and the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic have been open simultaneously.
Source: BIMCO, Mike Corkhill
