Several vessels laden with food and fuel are waiting for an icebreaker assistance to call at Port of Magadan, which is now enclosed by coastal ice, RIA Novosti reported.
"The problem is that the icebreaker Magadan, which had been involved in rescue and search of people from sunken Kolskaya rig in the Okhotsk Sea which, was supposed to arrive in the capital of Kolyma two weeks ago," said Deputy General Director of JSC Magadan Commercial Sea Port Vitaly Samoilenko.
The arrival of the icebreaker is expected on January 1-2. Then the icebreaker will escort a caravan of cargo ships and tankers to the port and release the vessels now trapped at the port, the stevedore company's executive said.
The M/V Zolotaya Kolyma laden with 25,000 tons of coal has been waiting for three days in open water. The Port Authority has decided to send an ice-class vessel to assist the Golden Kolyma through the ice floe so she could be unloaded as soon as possible at the port’s coal terminal.
Port of Magadan is one of the largest ports in the north-east of Russia, handling as much as 90 percent of cargoes shipped to the Magadan region. There are four stevedore companies currently operating at the port, including the major operator - JSC Magadan Commercial Sea Port that handled last year 832,357 tons of cargo, a 12.1-percent growth year-over-year.