Arctic rush

New Barents Sea port and 500 km railway link will connect Asia with the Arctic

A 500 kilometer railway from Karpogory to Indiga is now on the table for for investment as part of Russia’s larger Arctic infrastructure strategy.

“In general, it’s absolutely normal, uncomplicated terrain, there are no particularly expensive work,” acting Arkhangelsk governor Aleksandr Tsybulsky told reporters this week according to state-run news agency TASS.

Construction of the railway, a side-track from the larger projected Belkomur line, is estimated at 200 billion rubles.

Belkomur is the longtime planned rail line from Solikamsk in the Urals via Syktyvkar in the Komi Republic to Arkhangelsk by the White Sea. This railway across Russia’s European north will cut the distance from the Urals and Siberia to Arkhangelsk by 800 kilometers.

In the village of Indiga on the coast to the Barents Sea, five milion dollars are already spent to prepare for the construction of a deepwater year-round port, TASS reports.

More money is in the pipe when the large-scale construction work for the port facilities starts next year. Investments may exceed 300 billion rubles ($4,13 billion) before grand opening of the port in 2025, according to the private investment fund AEON Corporation.

Russia’s new Arctic hub in Indiga will get a capacity to handle 80 to 200 million tons of cargo per year.

Cargo to be shipped out to the ice-free Barents Sea via the port in Indiga includes coal, wood and paper, fertilizers and chemical products. This products aimed for the world markets will come from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China via the new railway.

If in flow by 2025, the Indiga hub will be the first major linking Asia with the Arctic.

China and Arkhangelsk
Belkomur railway, though, is expected to give a big boost to shipping through the new Arkhangelsk deep-sea port as well.

As previously reported by the Barents Observer, the deep-water port by the Dvina delta outside the city of Arkhangelsk will partly be built with Chinese funding.

In 2016 the Arctic Transport and Industrial Centre Arkhangelsk signed an agreement of intent with the Beijing based Poly International Holding Co. on the deep-sea port construction.

“The Chinese People’s Republic is for us a key partner in implementation of Arctic projects, including the bug ones, the most important,” former Arkhangelsk governor Igor Orlov said at the time.

His successor, Aleksandr Tsybulsky now expects even more economic boost from the Belkomur railway and the side-track to Indiga.

“We will be able to handle most export cargo, which is now shipped via St. Petersburg, and thereby offer economic conditions for our investors to be able to develop more actively and not waste money on transport,” Tsybulsky said to TASS.

From China via Kyrgyzstan
The acting governor points to Kyrgyzstan as a key player for bringing goods to the Arctic, both its own, and transit cargo from China.

“Today, Kyrgyzstan is on the verge og making investment decisions on railway construction. They plan to build it across the country in order to transport Chinese good in transit, and then connect the railway network to neighboring countries,” Tsybulsky said.

He elaborates on the volums: “If we first take Kyrgyz cargoes, it is not much of it. I think up to five million tons. We could then take some Chinese cargo. Plus we can take [from] Kazakhstan, with an annual agreement at the highest level, transit of about 30-40 million tons of coal.”

Economically rational?
Not everyone is convinced the changed patterns of Asia global cargo flow via the Arctic will happen in the speed projected by Russian authorities.

Arild Moe, a Research Professor with the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, Norway, has for decades studied Russia’s Arctic investments and sailings along the Northern Sea Route.

He says to the Barents Observer that there are several plans on the table for development of north-south transport links.

“The Belkomur railway, from the Urals to Arkhangelsk, has been under discussion for many years, without much happening on the ground,” Professor Moe says.

He points to earlier plans for the Indiga port that turned out to be nothing.

“Indiga was first planned as an LNG terminal, but that project has been abandoned. The investment requirements are very big,” Arild Moe explains.

“It is not immediately clear why it would be economically rational to send goods from Central Asia or China via the Arctic if the destination is Western markets,” he adds.

Tankers cross Russian Arctic route without icebreaker assistance

The sea ice along the Russian Arctic coast is quickly vanishing as temperatures in the region have been reaching record highs.

With the retreating ice comes tanker traffic.

It was the “Christophe de Margerie” that on the 19th May kickstarted this year’s shipping season across the eastern part of the Northern Sea Route. The vessel owned and operated by Russian shipping company Sovcomflot loaded up liquefied natural gas in Sabetta and is due to arrive in the Chinese port of Jingtang on the 11th June.

It was the earliest east-bound shipment on the route ever for this kind of vessel.

By 27th May, the ship had made it almost to the island of Wrangle, information from ship tracker service MarineTraffic shows. The “Christophe de Margerie” is accompanied by nuclear powered icebreaker “Yamal”.

In the wake of the almost 300 meter long vessel now follow the “Vladimir Voronin”, a vessel that is operated by company Teekay. The “Vladimir Voronin” on the 25th May left Sabetta and was on May 27th located in the Vilkitsky Strait north of the Taymyr Peninsula.

According to Marine Traffic, there is also a third tanker in the region.

None of the latter two vessels are accompanied by icebreakers. The “50 Let Pobedy” that escorted the “Vladimir Voronin” out of Sabetta and eastwards towards the Vilkitsky Strait has now returned and appears to be on its way back to Sabetta.

Ice maps by the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute show that there are open waters in the southernmost parts of the Laptev Sea and the

East Siberian Sea. There is now only one-year old ice along the whole route contrary to last year when a belt of multi-year old ice covered parts of the East Siberian Sea.

Ice layers on the Northern Sea Route have shrunk dramatically over a number of years and in September 2019 the ice sheet was at its second smallest level ever.

Among the drivers of the sea ice melting are the quickly increasing temperatures.

The year 2019 saw the second highest average temperatures in the Arctic ever, and the latest climate report by Roshydromet says that average winter temperatures along the Northern Sea Route, the waters located along the country’s Arctic coast, have increased by about 5 degrees since the 1990s.

The “Christophe de Margerie” and “Vladimir Voronin” are part of a fleet of 15 vessels that serve the Yamal LNG project. They all have ice class Arc7 and can autonomously break through up to 2,1 meters of sea ice.

The fleet of LNG carriers are instrumental in the major spike in shipping in the Russian Arctic. In 2019, a total of 31,5 million tons of goods were shipped on the Northern Sea Route, an increase of almost 60 percent from the previous year.