The Northern Sea Route cannot become a rival of the Suez Canal. It is just a new transport corridor to cater mainly for the offshore projects in the North Basin, IAA PortNews journalist cites Victor Olersky, Deputy Transport Minister of the Russian Federation, as saying at the international exhibition NEVA-2013 in Saint-Petersburg.
“NSR is primarily required to cater for offshore projects rather than for transit transportation”, he said.
According to the estimates of the Deputy Transport Minister, NSR can transport 60-70 mln t of cargo per year in 2020-ies including only 5-7 mln t of transit cargo.
Olersky thinks, the volume of transit cargo will depend “on the progress in the construction of the fleet of icebreakers and on the global market in general”.
“Therefore, major cargo of the Northern Sea Route is hydrocarbons produced in the North Basin”, he sums up.
600 applications have been submitted for ship journeys along the Northern Sea Route from the beginning of 2013. Some 10% of them were denied mainly because of vessel’s or crew’s incompliance with the technical requirements for Arctic navigation. The waiting time is 15 days (normally, a week).
In 2012, NSR transit hit 2 mln t of cargo.