Polar Shipping Routes

[ivica]

Polar Shipping Routes page (Rodrigue, J-P et al. (2012) The Geography of Transport Systems, Hofstra University, Department of Global Studies & Geography, http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans.) gives basic information and map.

Asian Venture ship (vehicles carrier) is according to SailWX at position N 88°42' E 053°40'. That fits Transpolar Sea Route.
I have no information is any icebreaker escorting the ship.

BTW: Thinking about NP40 which is not too far away.

[Espen]

Ivica;

I am pretty this Asian Venture is not near that location, only very few ships have the ice certificate that allows them to enter into the polar sea, and I have never heard of vehicle carriers being classified for that purpose, and BTW it is in th Persian Gulf at the moment:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?oldmmsi=352297000&zoom=10&olddate=lastknown

Here is a sample of a ice classified vessel: http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/showallphotos.aspx?imo=9242986&photoid=139988#top_photo

[mati]

yer map is wrong..

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?zoom=9&oldmmsi=352297000&olddate=5/26/2013%202:08:00%20AM
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?MMSI=352297000

[ivica]

Espen & mati, thanks.
Yes, position in Persian Gulf makes more sense, for that ship.

Collecting info already existing on ASIF:

Link to New Trans-Arctic shipping routes navigable by midcentury article given by Jim Hunt here.

mati has thread China to start shipping via the northern sea route.

[Anne]

US heavy-duty ice-breaker Polar Star is back in service and undergoing Arctic trials, having put out of Unalaska on Friday. The 35-year-old ship is one of two US ships designed to break through ice up to 21 feet thick.

Members of the Alaska and Washington congressional delegations have argued for beefing up the nation's ice-breaking capabilities as climate change opens up more previously frozen regions to scientific and commercial exploration.

[Espen]

Where on earth do you find 21 feet (6,4 meter) sea ice now a days?
Why do they always have to exaggerate it is far from Texas

[anonymous]

Where on earth do you find 21 feet (6,4 meter) sea ice now a days?

Icebridge data from 2013 goes up to 24m in the Arctic. Not saying there are floes of this thickness, but there are still ridges which stop any icebreaker. Well, probably not at the Russian side.

[Espen]

And not in US territory either

[Anne]

More on heavy-duty icebreaker Polar Star, headed for the Arctic in search of ice in which to test her systems. She is expected to be in the Arctic for the next month and a half. The ship is "equipped to smash through up to 6 feet of ice at 3 knots and 21 feet if backing and ramming." No word on where she's going, but interesting that she's headed to the Antarctic later in the year to break ice into the U.S. McMurdo Station on Ross Island.  (The nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker Yamal is confined to the northern hemisphere because she's dependent on cold water to cool her reactor.)

[mati]

Shipping through the melting Arctic looks to be increasing fivefold this summer compared to 2012. 270 vessels have so far received permits to sail along the Northern Sea Route which connects East Asia to Europe via the waters off of Russia’s northern coast.


http://barentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2013/07/towards-commercial-breakthrough-northern-sea-route-30-07

[mati]

actual ships requesting passage:

http://asmp.morflot.ru/en/razresheniya/

[Neven]

Thank you, mati! That's good info.

[Jim Hunt]

And according to CBC:

19 vessels have officially registered with authorities to sail through the Northwest Passage this year, but the true number may be much higher

.

[Anne]

The headline of this story is about the lifting of one of the obstacles to Shell's drilling (which is bad enough), but look what else is there:

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Thomas Ostebo also spoke at the NAMEPA conference, raising fresh concerns about increasing commercial marine traffic in the Arctic and the lack of international rules, both of which are creating risks.

“This is not something in the future. This is happening now,” Ostebo said. “Eight days ago we had a 1,000-foot tanker carrying a million gallons of fuel transit the Bering Straits. This is not a U.S.-registered vessel, it is operated by a third party (not the vessel owner) and it is not polar class,” which meant it lacked special ice protection, Ostebo said.

This year also saw the earliest entry of a cruise ship into the Arctic, a Russian vessel with 600 passengers.

“What would happen if there were a problem? We could have 600 people and half a million gallons of fuel in the sea off Point Hope,” he said.

The risks aren’t just fuel. Chemicals are also being carried on vessels crossing the Arctic. Russia has issued permits to more than 200 vessels to make the crossing this year, a four-fold increase in two years, Ostebo said.

The Coast Guard is particularly concerned about the lack of agreed-on “rules of the road” in the Bering Strait.

“We do not have a vessel separation and traffic system in place,” Ostebo said, unlike other geographically congested points where there is marine traffic, such as the Straits of Mallaca or Gilbraltar. “What we have is a free-for-all, with whoever going where they want.”

The rules are complex for establishing international vessel traffic systems under the International Maritime Organization, or IMO, so the best approach is a bilateral agreement with Russia.

Particularly alarming to note that ships without adequate hull protection are using the route.
 
The IMO is drafting a new Polar Code, but they aren't there yet.

Canadian and US Coastguards conducted a joint "spill drill" exercise in the Bering Strait last month.

[Tor Bejnar]

Container ship crossing Arctic for first time
_{^{Published: Wednesday, August 21, 2013}}
The 19,000-ton ship Yong Sheng, operated by China's state-controlled COSCO Group, is about to become the first container-transporting vessel to sail to Europe from China through the Arctic rather than taking the usual southerly route through the Suez Canal, shaving two weeks off the regular travel time in the process.
The ship is in the midst of a scheduled 35-day voyage from the port of Dalian to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. It would normally take 48 days to journey through the Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea.

_{[excerpt from eenews.net]}

[Anne]

There's a long Guardian article about the Yong Sheng's voyage and the Arctic route here.

[JimD]

When Mati posted his link above on the 6th of Aug the number of ships requesting permission to make the passage was 270.

Just 15 days later it is 431.

On another thread I posted a note about Chinese projections of the number of ships they expect to have crossing the Arctic in 2020.  They expect 15% of their total to go via the Arctic Ocean by then.  We could be looking  at 3,000 ships a year in 2020.

Espen

Interesting number.  Out of curiosity I was wondering how many ships that might mean.

In 2011 China's container port traffic was 140 million teu's (an industry measure  - a teu is the equivalent to a 20ft sea container).

From Wiki the average size of a container ship is roughly 10,000 teu's (there are a few as large as 16,000).

14,000 container ship loads then in 2011 for China.

15% would then work out to 2100 ships crossing the arctic just from China!!   Yikes!!

Considering all the other countries who would also be using the Arctic Ocean routes we  could be looking at several thousand crossings a season. 

For reference I found reports that the number of crossings of the Northern Sea Route in 2012 was about 60 and the number of trips through the Northwest passage was 20 or so.  Even if we assume that the Arctic total was 100 passages last year then we are talking about an increase of around 30 times in 7 years.  I can only imagine the impacts.

[Sigmetnow]

From the Wall Street Journal's "Markets & Finance" section on Aug 22:  "Northern Shipping Route Opens Up in Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"

"In the frozen emptiness where Russia meets the Arctic Circle, a self-fulfilling prophecy is playing out.

Japanese and South Korean energy companies have begun shipping oil products through the Arctic’s melting ice—adding credibility to a route that could slash costs while avoiding risks associated with ferrying cargo through the Suez Canal."

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/08/22/northern-shipping-route-opens-up-in-self-fulfilling-prophecy/

[Jim Hunt]

The Yong Sheng has reappeared on AIS, and is currently heading south through the North Sea towards Rotterdam:

[Jim Hunt]

The Yong Sheng has now safely reached Rotterdam. Unfortunately the Nordvik has had an argument with a piece of ice and lost:

http://econnexus.org/the-yong-sheng-docks-in-rotterdam-as-the-nordvik-is-holed-on-the-northern-sea-route/

The tanker was fully loaded with diesel oil. As a result of the collision with the ice floe, the tanker got a hole in one of the ballast tanks and started taking in water. The hole has been plugged and the water ingress has stopped. The vessel is now drifting in the Matisen Strait. There is still no information about any leakage of oil.

[Espen]

New shipping venture: Coal from Canada to Finland by the North West Passage (in danish):

http://shippingwatch.dk/Rederier/article5981405.ece?ref=epn

[Espen]

This ship is now underway from Vancouver (Canada)  to Finland with coal. It is said to be the first commercial trip ever via the Nord West Passage (article in danish):

http://epn.dk/brancher/transport/skib/ECE5989047/banebrydende-dansk-issejlads-godt-pa-vej/

[Jim Hunt]

Thanks for the heads up Espen. My English language take on the story:

http://econnexus.org/the-northwest-passage-is-open-for-business/

[Jim Hunt]

The Nordic Orion has now successfully made its way through the southern route of the Northwest Passage and is currently heading out of Lancaster Sound into Baffin Bay:

http://econnexus.org/the-northwest-passage-is-open-for-business/#comment-44329

[Laurent]

Some news :
Arctic Shipping: Good For Invasive Species, Bad For the Rest of Nature
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/global-warmings-unexpected-consequence-invasive-species-180951573/?no-ist

Arctic shipping and marine invaders
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n6/full/nclimate2244.html#affil-auth

New Trans-Arctic shipping routes navigable by midcentury
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/02/27/1214212110.abstract?sid=8c829f84-716c-480d-98e5-7d7aef6856dc

Melting Arctic Ice Will Make Way for More Ships--and More Species Invasions
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/melting-arctic-sea-ice-means-more-shipping-and-more-invasive-species/

http://www.fishwatch.gov/seafood_profiles/species/crab/species_pages/red_king_crab.htm

[solartim27]

An old thread, but it seemed to be the best place to post this.  A nice gif of shipping activity in the Arctic.
https://twitter.com/WoodsHoleResCtr/status/973311746269171712?s=20

WHRC & @FletcherSchool working with the longest Arctic record of satellite ship-tracking data to support sustainable development. @g_fiske also mapped every interaction with sea ice - results show mean center shift in shipping activity by nearly 300 km north and east

[morganism]

Arctic sea ice becoming a spring hazard for North Atlantic ships

American Geophysical Union. "Arctic sea ice becoming a spring hazard for North Atlantic ships." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 March 2018.

<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180319115755.htm>.

In early June, the Canadian coast guard pulled the research icebreaker Amundsen off its scientific expedition to escort ferries caught in the congested seas to open water, and conduct search and rescue operations for stranded passengers of ferry boats and ships trapped in the ice, as it was the only large icebreaker available at the time.

Between search and rescue missions, Barber and other scientists aboard the Amundsen used the ship's research equipment to figure out where the sea ice had come from and why so much ice was there at all.

[vox_mundi]

Pentagon Warns On Risk of Chinese Submarines in Arctic
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-military-arctic/pentagon-warns-on-risk-of-chinese-submarines-in-arctic-idUSKCN1S829H

China is becoming a rising power not only in consumer technology and artificial intelligence but also in Arctic military operations and nuclear submarine construction, according to a new report from the Pentagon.

“Arctic border countries have raised concerns about China’s expanding capabilities and interest in the region,” notes the report, “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019,” published today. Often called the “China Military Power” report, it’s required annually by Congress. This year, it highlights the country’s prowess in the Arctic. In 2018, China completed its ninth Arctic expedition last year, published its first Arctic strategy document, and launched its second icebreaker, the Xuelong 2. The ship, capable of breaking 1.5 meters of ice, is the first polar research vessel that “can break ice while moving forwards or backwards,” according to the report.

... The Pentagon report noted that Denmark has expressed concern about China’s interest in Greenland, which has included proposals to establish a research station and a satellite ground station, renovate airports and expand mining.

also; ...

The China Challenge
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-army-nuclear/

[vox_mundi]

Theodore Roosevelt Strike Group in Alaska for High-End, Joint Exercise Northern Edge 2019 
https://news.usni.org/2019/05/14/theodore-roosevelt-strike-group-in-alaska-for-high-end-joint-exercise-northern-edge-2019

An aircraft carrier is in Alaska for Exercise Northern Edge for the first time in a decade, as the service continues to prioritize re-learning how to operate in the Arctic.

... The Arctic ice cap is as small as we’ve seen in our lifetime, and this gives rise to increasing trade routes and sea lanes that are open more times of the year, so it’s incredibly important that we as an Arctic nation continue to operate in this area to protect this vital area to our national defense.