Russia’s Arctic Northern Sea Passage To Ship 80 Million Tonnes By 2024

Arctic Energy Resources Heading For Increased Asian Demand

Russia’s Minister for the Development of the Far East and Arctic Alexander Kozlov has said that Russia plans to synchronize the time of construction of icebreakers, cargo ships and port infrastructure in the Arctic with the implementation of investment projects in order to boost freight traffic along the Northern Sea Route to 80 million tonnes by 2024.

“Together with Rosatom and the Ministry of Transport, we plan to synchronize the construction of icebreakers, cargo ships, the emergency rescue fleet, and port infrastructure in accordance with investment project timelines. Obviously, the required infrastructure will appear earlier than the new plants. That is the only way we can reach the objective to ramp up the cargo turnover of the Northern Sea Route to 80 million tonnes by 2024.”
According to the minister, the Arctic’s biggest investor Novatek is building liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in the region and plans to create another terminal in Kamchatka in Bechevinskaya Bay. The terminal is expected to be able to handle 21.7 million tonnes of LNG annually. US$4.6 billion has been invested in the project. “NOVATEK is creating its LNG sea shipping complex in anticipation of the development of the Northern Sea Route, the shortest sea route between Europe and Asia.” Kozlov added.

Customers are expected to be from China, India and South-East Asia. Indian companies intend to increase the supply of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) in particular they are interested in buying gas from future Novatek projects – Arctic LNG-2 and Arctic LNG-3, Russia’s Minister of Energy Alexander Novak has said following meetings with Indian Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas of India Dharmendra Pradhan. “We also discussed that the LNG market will expand and in the future our Indian partners are interested in increasing LNG supplies, including the new project Arctic LNG-2 and the future new project Arctic LNG-3. Other projects are possible. We will continue to cooperate with them, work things out,” he said. The first LNG shipments from Russia to India were delivered last year from the Yamal LNG plant.

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