The Northern Sea Route will be opened at the wrong time: gas carriers will go to Asia in winter and spring: EADaily

Next year, they want to conduct an experiment on the Northern Sea Route to pilot gas carriers at the most inopportune time – from January to May, when navigation in the Arctic is traditionally closed.

“Starting from January, gas carriers will move under icebreaker support, including in those months when they never sailed – March, April and May. This will mean year-round navigation,” – said the head of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Glavsevmorput” Sergei Zybko at the forum “Arctic: Present and Future”, RIA Novosti reports.

Traditionally, navigation for tankers of the Yamal LNG project opens in June and ends in December. The rest of the time, Arctic gas is delivered through Europe, where it is transferred from ice-class tankers to traditional ones. The Northern Sea Route allows you to shorten the journey to Asia from five to three weeks.

Kommersant notes that Novatek previously tried piloting LNG tankers in January and May, but one of the gas carriers suffered damage to its propulsion system. The publication believes that tests of year-round navigation may be due to the fact that in recent years the main flow of Yamal LNG has gone to Europe, and the United States has imposed sanctions against the Arctic LNG-2 project, the first stage of which should begin shipments at the beginning of 2024.

Alexander Sobko noted to Kommersant that test shipments will make it possible to evaluate the economics of icebreaker support, including in practice to check whether it is possible to escort a caravan of several tankers with one nuclear icebreaker, on which the final price of transporting LNG to the east will critically depend.