SEVERODVINSK, Russia (Reuters) – when a severe snowstorms prevented recently the arrival of the fuel supply to the icy town of Nome in Alaska, United States officials attended a Russian company to ask for help.
The risky Mission – in the middle of a chopped and plagued by ice – sea gave rise to the first shipment of fuel to the West of Alaska in full winter, crowning a year pioneer for transport as the development of the oil and gas and climate change increase traffic on the Hermisferio Northern trade routes.
Russia plays the future growth of mining with the vast energy resources of the Arctic, and has revived the route of shipping of the Soviet era along the coast of Siberia as an integral part of his plans.
Initiative also promises an economic revival for the ports of Russia and its shipyards, which have faced problems after the glory days of the Soviet era.
But marine and industry analysts say that the ice floes, the narrow, shallow waters, poor infrastructure and tempestuous winters are still grounds for safe and profitable navigation through polar access live.
“We must develop the Arctic!, said Fazil Aliyev, a captain and owner of an oil ship that traveled to Alaska.
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“Is profitable for all.” “Our clients win because your cargo is delivered faster, we now need to make it viable economically (…) try a route throughout the year”, said, speaking by phone from Vladivostok, the Russian gate input for the Asian markets.
Aliyev, RIMSCO, the company tripled its load along coastal of Russia last year, when the warm summer kept open what Russia calls the Northern sea route, who was with good conditions for a then-record of 141 days, almost a month more than usual.
Sometimes called the Northeast passage, the circumpolar route is a network of sea lanes in the upper part of the continental Eurasia that crosses Russian waters since the passage of Kata to the Bering Strait and cut about 4,000 nautical miles (7,400 kilometres) on the routes of the South.
A group of Danish maritime transport, Nordic Bulk Carriers, said that a third of the cost and about half of the time of delivery of goods to China sailing towards the North of Russia rather than go through the Suez Canal is saved.
“It is a very promising region and an interesting sea has almost half distance between Europe and the far East,” said Aliyev.
Hard times by the yard
In the port of Severodvinsk on the White Sea, formerly a city of 200,000 inhabitants in the heart of the program of nuclear submarines of the cold war, Defense contracts won by the shipyard and tested at a nearby naval base still pay most of wages.
Large black submarines were launched into the sea from their docks in water free of ice without the aid of tugs or icebreaker, and insualmente later in the autumn of last year.
Built in the 1930s, the State Enterprise Sevmashpredpriyatiye, 35 kilometres (22 miles) North of the city of Arkhangelsk, is a mixture of buildings and production facilities large enough as to be a city in itself, with bars, churches and a Museum for its 27,000 employees.
Shipyard lived hard times in the 1990s when Moscow cut defense spending, and the market share of Russia world of shipbuilding was reduced to only 0.2 per cent. China and Korea of the South now dominate the sector, with a 37 and 35 percent of the market, tiers.
Yelena Makhovetskaya, 27, graduated from the University of shipbuilding Sevmashpredpriyatiye, said wages were among the highest of the Soviet Union when his parents moved there in the 1970s. Salaries have fallen since then against the national average, many people are gone, and they are less coming to work in the region, he said.
But the new state contracts are fuelling a revival. The sector was one of the few to expand during the nadir of the crisis of 2009, with a production of up to 62 percent and another 8 percent in 2010.
The Sevmashpredpriyatiye director, Andrei Dyachkov, said the shipyard expects to benefit from his knowledge of the Arctic to win orders for the construction of platforms for drilling offshore, their ships of support in ice and even a runway floating to the fields of petroleum services in the Pechora sea.
A race to exploit the energy wealth at the bottom of the Arctic sea – believed contains up to a quarter of hydrocarbons untapped worldwide – since it has brought new contracts.
Under an order of the State energy company Gazprom, Sevmashpredpriyatiye completed the first production platform open sea ice in Russia, which was released to the Pechora sea in August to drill the Prirazlomnoye oil deposit-resistant
Fast and free of pirates
Russia has always transported shipments of oil, mineral iron and marine products through its extensive North Coast, but until the 2009 no foreign-flag merchant vessels had crossed the trade route.
When the fast rising temperatures melted Arctic ice cover in one of their thinner areas in 2011, a record of 34 barges – more than double of 2010 and including the supertankers – stretched to the seas splashed ice.
The Russian shipping, Sovkomflot, giant toured the way coastal with the largest ship in the world, a tanker of class Suezmax loaded with 120,000 tons of gas condensate, while Scorpio Tanker Inc. ship sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a time of eight days récrod.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has described the route as a rival faster and free of Pirates of the Suez channel.
“I have no doubt that it is only the beginning,” said Putin on travel in a Forum International Arctic in September.
With an eye to the billions of dollars earned by the sea of Egypt, Moscow expected transit tolls and fees of the lease binding of one of their escort vessels of the Atomic icebreaker, which would help to finance their own needs of the Arctic infrastructure costs.
Much of the 5,500 Russian kilometers located off the coast of the Arctic are uninhabited, without stations service, infrastructure to help the marine coastal navigation and guards.
Its incomparable nuclear icebreaker fleet is a financial burden of huge – regardless of whether they are used or not – since that always reactors must be working, he told Reuters Arild Moe, Vice President of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute of Norway.
“The sea is considered an important part of the national transport infrastructure, as well as a manifestation of Russian interests in the Arctic,” said Moe. “The key issue is funding,” he added.
The Kremlin plans to invest $ 1.2 billion until 2014 in its fleet of ships for ice and the construction of three rempehielos based on atomic energy and six electric ships diesel by 2020.
(Report of Albina Kovalyova and Alissa Carbonnel, additional report of Gleb Bryanski.) (Edited by Marion Giraldo in Spanish)
