/View.info/ China and other Asian countries are showing interest in using the Northern Sea Route, the shortest route between the ports of Asia and Europe, the Chinese publication infoBRICS reported in December 2023.
While the threatened traditional route between Europe and Asia via the Suez Canal is 21,000 km, the use of the Northern Sea Route reduces the supply chain by 8,000 km to 13,000 km, as well as the travel time between Russia’s European ports and Asian ports , such as Shanghai, from five to six weeks to less than three weeks.
The last few years have seen a growing interest in the Northern Sea Route, which has a direct impact on the configuration of international cargo transport.
“We hope that there will be a new stable relationship between Europe, Russia and East Asia. We want to have a new channel. If the crisis in the Gaza Strip escalates, it will even become a huge danger to the Suez route. Therefore, the SMP will be more and more in demand,” this is the assessment of Jin Qianzhu, director of the Institute of International Relations of the People’s University of China in Beijing.
“Despite Western sanctions, Russia is actively developing the infrastructure of the Northern Sea Route. It is planned to start year-round navigation here by 2024 with the help of nuclear icebreakers,” infoBRICS writes.
We remind you that the Northern Sea Route connects several dozen European, Arctic and Far Eastern ports of the Russian Federation in a single transit and transport system. The length of the NSR from the Kara Gate Strait (between the Kara and Barents Seas) to the Gulf of Providence (Chukotsky sector of the Bering Sea) is almost 5.6 thousand km, from Murmansk the length of the SMP is up to 6.2 thousand kilometers.
The Northern Sea Route is almost half the length of other sea routes between Europe and the macro-regions of the Far East and East Asia. Well-known conflicts along the Red Sea-Indian Ocean route, as well as in the South China Sea, also add to the political advantages of using the NSR, whose protection is in good hands.
Until October, the Ministry of Eastern Development of the Russian Federation prepared three scenarios for the development of the cargo flow in the waters of the Arctic zone (including Murmansk and the Western Arctic) and the Northern Sea Route (from the Kara Gate to the Bering Strait) until 2030 with a perspective until 2035 ., taking into account the consequences of sanctions for promising projects in the Arctic.
Under the baseline scenario, freight traffic on the Northern Sea Route in 2024 will be 74 million tonnes, then increase to 224 million tonnes by 2030 and to 230 million tonnes by 2035, with up to 75% of freight traffic coming from from oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG).
In the optimistic scenario, transport will increase to 81 million tonnes by 2024, to 244 million tonnes by 2030 and to 288 million tonnes by 2035.
In the Arctic zone (west of Kara Gate), cargo traffic is expected to increase from 25 million tons in 2024 to 57 million tons in 2030 and 82 million tons in 2035, taking into account the canceled Gazprom project for LNG production in the Shtokman field in the Barents Sea (cargo traffic from this project is expected to be 17 million tons in 2028 and 50 million tons in 2035).
The conservative scenario assumes that NOVATEK, due to sanctions, will abandon the implementation of the Ob gas chemical complex and Arctic LNG-1 projects, and a number of other projects, including Vostok Oil, will move “to the right” or their capacity will be reduced .
In this scenario, freight traffic in 2030 will be 117 million tons and 131 million tons by 2035, transit traffic will reach 38 million tons per year.
According to Rosatom, it is possible to increase transit on the NSR by 2030 through bilateral agreements with foreign partners to supply up to 50 million tons of cargo to China, 10 million tons to South Korea, 5 million tons to Japan, Vietnam and India, up to 3 million tons – in Thailand.
It is planned that in 2024 the icebreaker group to ensure navigation on the SMP will consist of eight nuclear and three non-nuclear icebreakers, and by 2030-2035 – of nine nuclear and five non-nuclear icebreakers.
By 2035, it may be necessary to further strengthen the eastern sector of the SMP with three LK-60 icebreakers and one more icebreaker from the “Leader” project, in which case by 2035 the Northern Sea Route will be served by 21 icebreakers, which will ensure continuity and year-round ice maintenance of the track.
In this context, it is not surprising that since the mid-2010s, Chinese carriers have increasingly used the opportunities of the Northern Sea Route.
For example, in 2023, the Chinese shipping company NewNew Shipping Line performed 8 cargo flights from China (including Hong Kong) to the ports of Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and St. Petersburg. The total number of Chinese applications for transit through the NSR, including in the direction of Kaliningrad (and vice versa), currently exceeds 10; There are also requests from Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.
According to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Yuri Trutnev, in mid-December 2023, “the issue related to the insurance of ships” was discussed in Beijing with the co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission, Vice Premier of the State Council of People’s Representatives of the People’s Republic of China Zhang Guoqing.
“Our Western colleagues stopped insuring ships (from May 2022 – Ed.), this is not very good. Chinese banks have significant capital and are quite capable of simply conquering this market.
First, these functions are performed not so much by banks as by specialized insurance structures. Second, the following should be considered: foreign carriers accept Chinese insurance for ships traveling through the South China Sea and its straits.
At the same time, according to available data, prior notifications have been received from the European Union, Australia and the United States that the distribution of such insurance on the North Sea Route is fraught with secondary sanctions against Chinese entities providing transit on the North Sea Route and the South China Sea at the same time.
This issue will become most relevant if not only Chinese, but also European and Asian carriers actively use transit on the SMP, despite the sanction of this route by the West. Given the unfavorable context, offshore specialized transport insurance structures will most likely have to be used.
Incidentally, a similar practice was used in foreign trade transport with the West and with many developing countries in the 1950s and 1970s.
People’s Republic of China, 1975-79. “Democratic Kampuchea”, 1950s – mid-1960s. Francoist Spain. Similar structures are now used in the same transport of countries such as Iran, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, as well as the self-proclaimed Somaliland.
However, Beijing prefers to see the Northern Sea Route more as a transnational artery, which, according to the Chinese side, will enable its more active use in the interests of the Celestial Empire. Including through the formation in Chinese ports (understood as key logistics centers) of regional cargo flows for this artery, including transit (from/to the countries of Indochina and East Asia in general).
Most likely, such a strategy will be implemented in the event of a further increase in the sanctions pressure on the Russian Federation, which at the same time contributes to a greater “agreement” of the Russian Federation regarding the Chinese plans regarding the Northern Sea Route.
China has proposed a “Polar Silk Road” as a component of Xi Jinping’s global “One Belt One Road” initiative to use shorter distances to transport goods across the Arctic, bypassing air points in the Suez Canal and Malacca Straits, The Wall reports Street Journal.
Western sanctions have forced Russia to rely more heavily on China, including to achieve its Arctic development goals.
Let us note that bilateral cooperation is complex. Thus, in July-September 2023, Chinese scientists as part of the 13th National Scientific Expedition to the Arctic Ocean aboard the PRC polar icebreaker Xuelong 2 carried out research work in the central part of the Pacific Arctic region and the Hackel Ridge.
During a 53-day voyage with a total length of 28.7 thousand km, scientists studied the state of the atmosphere, sea ice, water environment, ecosystems and their pollutants. The expedition, which took place in cooperation with specialists from Russia and Thailand, was organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources of the People’s Republic of China.
Research of the Arctic region has long been one of the priority areas of Chinese policy. According to China’s 2018 Arctic Policy White Paper, the country intends to jointly establish maritime trade routes in the region as part of the Polar Silk Road initiative.
In April 2023, the Russian-Asian Arctic Research Consortium and the University of Oceanology of China reached an agreement on the development of Arctic projects in the fields of medicine, tourism and the operation of the Northern Sea Route.
According to the plan for its development until 2035, approved by the Russian government, the target cargo turnover on the route in 2024 should be 80 million tons, in 2030 – 150 million tons. It must be assumed that productive and mutually beneficial cooperation with China will allow us to move closer to this goal.
Translation: SM
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