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Tag: shipping route

  • Future Central Arctic Shipping Route

    Central Arctic Shipping Route

    A shipping route through the central Arctic Ocean depends on significant reduction of ice thickness in that area.

    The so-called multi-year ice in the central Arctic Ocean has been changing drastically (up to 40% decrease) and disappearing completely in the last 50 years.

    If this development continues, ships with icebreaker abilities can navigate the central Arctic Ocean in nearest future.

    The image shows a possible new shipping route in the future. Of course much of the ice would have to melt for this to come to reality.

    The image also shows shy Iceland hopes to be utilized regarding Arctic Shipping, possibly with a hub-port to Europe and America.

  • Northeast Passage

    Northeast Passage shipping route

    The Northeast Passage is in reality a useful sea route. It runs from the northernmost parts of the North Sea across the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean north of Russia, east to the Chukchi Sea and Bering Straits where access to the North Pacific is reached.

    Several straits in the Passage can be classified as international.

    The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is an established commercial seaway that was used for domestic transportation and played an important economic role for the Soviet Union around World War II.

    The course of NSR was defined in a Russian regulation in 1990 and is in fact (rather than theoretically), the middle part of the Northeast Passage.

    To that extent, the Northern Sea Route can be equated with the Northeast Passage if this simple fact is known.

    As with the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage is limited for use because of extreme natural conditions based on the geographical location of the passage. However, if climate change continues to effectively bring warmer air to the area, condition of winds, ice and currents might result in more favourable sea route. But that does not resolve the legal issues and questions that rise if foreign ships use it as no specific universal agreement has been settled on that matter.

    In the summer of 2011 sea ice was at an all time low since measuring began. That resulted in extended shipping in the route. In August it took only eight days for the STI Heritage tanker to go from Murmansk in Russia to the Bering Sea. Russia is strengthening its fleet of icebreakers and will continue to use the route when it is possible, which is still only for a few months around the summertime.

  • Northwest Passage

    Northwest Passage shipping route

    The Northwest Passage is first and foremost considered to be continuous passage between islands and the continental mainland of Canada rather than an actual shipping route.

    The Passage represents a potentially attractive and valuable commercial shipping route if it were to become more accessible for navigation and at a longer period of the year. In reality, it is a series of passages trough straits of the Arctic Archipelago.

    It allows shipping from the North Atlantic Ocean, up Davis Strait between Canada and Greenland. The passage then continues trough the Arctic Archipelago, to the Beaufort Sea over to Chukchi Sea and the Bering Strait into the North Pacific. Because of the many islands of the Arctic Archipelago, the potential shipping routes are in fact several each way.

    However some straits are more feasible than others due to the formation of the land under water.

    As with the Arctic itself, the status of the Northwest Passage was given limited attention until the latter part of the 20th century. The reason for that, as with other ice-covered areas of the Arctic, is that no particular interest was shown to utilize the route for transport and the conditions were thought to be dangerous. The tables have certainly turned and the Northwest Passage is now seen as a revolutionary opening for large scale transportation by ships from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic Ocean.