Cold is the new hot in shipping circles as melting sea ice opens up prospects for trade between China and the West to move across the roof of the world.
An increasing amount of seaborne traffic is beginning to move on the so-called Northern Sea Route, which traverses the Siberian coast. There are also hopes of opening up more of the North West Passage above Canada.
The attraction of the voyage is that it is a third of the distance of more traditional routes through the Suez Canal. This means lower CO{-2} emissions, less fuel — and fewer pirates.
Attacks on ships off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden have become so severe that some owners already use longer sea routes around South Africa to avoid conflict.
Christian Bonfils, the managing director of Nordic Barents operator Nordic Bulk Carriers, claims it will save him $180,000 in fuel costs. New Arctic voyages are starting all the time. A Russian oil company, Novatek, is currently carrying a trial shipment of 60,000 tonnes of oil products to China via northern Siberia on the vessel Perseverance.
Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest nickel producer, has just broken new ground by carrying ore from the Arctic port of Dudinka to Rotterdam in Holland. Two tankers owned by Murmansk Shipping, the Varzuga and Indiga, loaded with 27,000 tonnes of petroleum, recently moved through the ice-thinned passage from Murmansk to Chukotka in the Russian far east.
But it is not all plain sailing. Quite a lot of the Arctic routes are not properly mapped and surveyed while there is a serious dispute in Canada over whether the famous North West Passage is international water or sovereign territory.
Meanwhile the Russian authorities are still trying to decide what to do about dumped radioactive materials left along the route. The Tsivolka Inlet on Novaya Zemyla has been used as a burial ground for nuclear reactors such as the one from the first atomic-powered icebreaker, the Lenin.
The gathering interest in the Northern Sea Route is being generated by a political as well as a physical thaw. Global warming is reducing the thickness and immovability of the ice but Moscow is changing too. Russia under Dmitry Medvedev is an increasingly outward-looking country.
Last week in Murmansk, the Russian President signed a bilateral agreement with Norway after a 40-year row over sea boundaries. It started with arguments over fish but has become a negotiation largely driven by prospects for oil and gas in the Barents Sea and beyond.
Wider political changes are happening as the Arctic increasingly becomes a hunting ground for minerals rather than the seals of the past.
The ship owners believe that this route could gradually be open for transit up to four months per year as air and sea temperatures increase. But they also foresee a world ahead when vessels can take a direct east-west route across the north pole.
Canadian and American maritime experts say two per cent of global shipping could be diverted to the Arctic by 2030, rising to five per cent by 2050.
Already cruise ships are bringing tourists and income to countries such as Greenland. But they are also raising concerns about safety and pollution from oil spills. There is a widespread view that it is only a matter of time before there is an emergency: a passenger ship in trouble and potential evacuation into freezing seas. Even with the best of intentions, the wider shipping industry will have accidents. Collisions are more likely in areas of thick fog and where some navigational equipment might malfunction in extreme cold. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011
