Northeast Passage soon open to freight traffic?

Published on: September 9, 2018 / Update from: September 9, 2018 - Author: Konrad Wolfenstein

When Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld traveled from Gothenburg to Japan in 1878, he was the first person to take the arduous route across the Arctic Ocean for this journey. At that time, the expedition lasted over a year and was highly risky.

At the beginning of last week, another ship set off with the plan to sail the Northeast Passage. This time, for the first time, it is a container ship from the Danish shipping company Maersk. It sets off from Vladivostok, loads electronic goods in Busan, South Korea, and is expected to reach its destination, St. Nicholas, on September 9th Petersburg. The Venta covers 14,000 kilometers, mostly through icy temperatures. That is at least 6,000 kilometers less than the currently preferred route via the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal.

However, the project does not make economic sense – at least not yet. Although the Northeast Passage saves up to 14 days of travel time, a lot of ship's diesel and the fees for crossing the Suez Canal, it still requires the accompaniment of Russian nuclear icebreakers, which causes the cost of the journey to skyrocket. In addition, the passage is currently only possible for a few months a year; it is only expected in a good ten years that the melting of the polar ice will have progressed to such an extent that the movement of goods across the north could become economically viable.

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