Arctic ambitions: Will US let Russia control shipping in the Far North? - Alaska Dispatch News Arctic ambitions: Will US let Russia control shipping in the Far North? Updated: September 28, 2016 Published June 28, 2015 YAKUTSK, Russia -- In August 1981, our Russian hosts built a campfire on a bluff overlooking the Lena River here, a region most Americans only know from its strategic position in the board game Risk. Under a bright midnight sun, we washed down frozen whitefish, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and stewed horsemeat with numerous toasts of Soviet champagne, vodka and brandy, and dreamed out loud about what could happen in the Arctic. A boat steamed by, headed downstream toward the port of Tiksi on the Arctic Ocean. Wally Hickel, then between his service as U.S. Interior secretary and his second term as Alaska governor, jumped up and waved his arms with excitement, explaining "that ship can turn west and go to Murmansk in Europe, east and go to Vladivostok on the Pacific. These Russians have shown how Arctic shipping can link the continents.

The rest of us need to learn there even is an Arctic Ocean!" It no longer takes the reverie of a campfire to envision hundreds, if not thousands, of ship voyages happening each year over the top of the world. For the practical purposes of commerce, the world has a brand-new ocean. Mines and gas fields in Northwest Siberia and the Norwegian Arctic use Russia's Northern Sea Route to expand their market options to the Pacific. Container ship owners -- who currently use canals in Suez and Panama as shortcuts -- are looking to a newly accessible Arctic to link Europe and Asia. China's Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO) made an experimental trans-Arctic container shipment in 2013. That same year, Asia's largest shipping and trading nations -- India, Singapore, China, Korea and Japan -- successfully pressed to join the eight-nation Arctic Council as "observers." Three major changes in the Arctic have occurred in a generation: • Arctic sea ice is thinner; • Icebreaking technology is better; and, • The supply of and demand for Arctic energy and mineral resources is growing.

While polar explorers have sought Arctic routes for centuries, nations in our time have an opportunity to work together now to offer a reliable international seaway in the Arctic. The world once coped with lengthy and dangerous shipping around two capes -- Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope -- before replacing them with the Panama and Suez canals. Singapore made port investments, based on Lee Kuan Yew's vision in the 1960s, and today it's a major trans-shipment hub of Asia. In the Arctic, coordinated investments in icebreakers, ports and promotion will make a huge difference for global shipping in a generation. The top of the world is no less ripe for infrastructure than the American West was after the Louisiana Purchase and before the transcontinental railroads. Perhaps the most effective model for an Arctic shipping regime is the St. Lawrence Seaway, operated by Canada and the U.S. and linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. Last year, the Seaway's 3,900 vessel customers carried 37.1 million metric tons of cargo, mostly grain, iron ore and bulk commodities. Icebreakers provided by the U.S. and Canada ensured the route stayed open 286 days.

A Seaway analysis says their infrastructure supports 227,000 jobs, $35 billion in economic activity, and saved shippers $3.6 billion in transport costs. Arctic shipping will happen, but without strong Western participation, it is likely to happen poorly -- with negative consequences for business reliability, the environment, energy access and security. In the last decade, Western nations bent over backward to keep Russia from having more opportunities to "turn off the tap" as pipelines were built to bring oil and gas from the Caspian Region. The Arctic basin contains 13 percent of the world's potential oil and 30 percent of the world's potential gas. Leaving Russia alone to shepherd shipping from the Arctic gives them even more dangerous leverage over global energy supplies. Avoiding future conflict is in Russia's interest, as well as our own; all nations would be served by greater international cooperation in Arctic shipping. Moreover, for many nations, Arctic shipping is a strategic business opportunity with high potential returns. Alaska, Canada and Russia benefit daily, financially, from their Arctic territory in the rapidly growing international aviation market.

For Anchorage, operations in support of international air cargo produces thousands of jobs; close to 50,000 Alaskans work in aviation overall. Russia and Canada get less of the interchange revenue but earn millions every year for flights over their territory. (The U.S. does not charge.) Meanwhile, much of the industrialized world benefits from shorter passenger and cargo flights. The same global benefits can arise from a determined effort to establish safe, secure and reliable Arctic shipping. Russias Arctic shipping aspirations In 2011, the Russian Geographic Society invited Arctic experts from around the world to come to Arkhangelsk, the Russian Arctic port used to receive lend-lease equipment from the allies during World War II. The society's chairman, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, convened a bevy of Russian cabinet members and governors whose territories cover Russia's northern coast. Putin spoke at length about Arctic shipping, which he believed would have the economic importance of the Suez Canal. He announced that Russia would build nine new icebreakers by 2020 and offer competitive tariffs to attract ships. His ministry of emergency situations would build depots of oil spill response equipment along the Russian coast.

His space agency would launch new communications, weather and ice-monitoring satellites to make sure the route is safe. His navy would establish new bases to make sure Russia's northern coast is secure. International cooperation was invited, but the message was clear -- Russia was going ahead, with or without the rest of the world. Tariffs up to $500,000 per voyage If you are master of a ship with a cargo to bring to Europe from the Pacific Ocean, how do you get there today? If you head north, the Northern Sea Route across the top of Russia is currently a better option than the often ice-choked Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. A direct, straight over-the-pole route used by aircraft probably would not be your best choice due to ice, but it's theoretically possible. A company seeking to transport goods through the Northern Sea Route would have to contact Russia's Northern Sea Route Administration several months in advance. Then, it would pay a tariff that can reach up to $500,000 a voyage. In 2013, close to 60 vessels made this trip, twice as many as the year before.

In 2014, the numbers were down, due to delays in oil drilling on Alaska's north coast as well as the "chilling" effect of Western sanctions against Russia. Nevertheless, Russia's Northern Sea Route is open for business and, so far, offers the only regular icebreaker ship-escort service in this part of the world. Rates are set to recover costs of the nation's nuclear icebreakers while leaving clients some savings due to shorter times and distances. However, shippers also look at reliability, not just cost and distance, in selecting routes. Russia's reputation for reliability has never been strong in global transportation. For example, trips linking Europe and Asia along the 99-year-old Trans-Siberian Railroad require switching railcar gauges and maintaining faith that the cargo won't be diverted en route. Legends of lost trains die hard. Russia's role in global aviation is a brighter story -- a large portion of flights linking Europe and North America to Asia and the Gulf countries fly through Russian airspace. However, Russia has been a cagey aviation partner. Russia publicly considered denying overflights last September in response to sanctions. It opted instead to maintain fees for airlines that reportedly total $500 million a year.

Alaska still holds the lion's share of cargo trans-shipment for polar aviation. U.S. reliability was established in the Cold War (Anchorage is the world's fourth largest air cargo airport due to polar flights), while Russia excluded many flights and even shot down a flight that strayed off its Pacific coast, Korean Airlines 007, in 1982. Besides caviar, vodka and unbranded resource commodities, it's hard to find a Russian service or product that leads in world markets. Hillary Clinton first The Arctic Council and its predecessor, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, had convened foreign ministers every other year or so since 1991. However, Hillary Clinton's decision to attend the 2011 meeting marked the first time the U.S. secretary of state participated. The meeting in Nuuk, Greenland, produced the first binding agreement among the Arctic eight -- Russia, United States, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland -- divvying up the Arctic region to assign responsibility for rescues in international waters.

Tens of thousands of air passengers cross that region weekly, and summer cruise ships full of tourists have plied the waters off Greenland, Alaska and Canada's Northwest Passage in recent years. In 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry kept the precedent and signed a similar binding oil spill response agreement when the council met in Sweden. The fact that Western diplomats have, with Russia, addressed Arctic Ocean safety is a good first step, but that should not be confused with addressing business opportunities. Under these two Arctic Council pacts, "Drill, baby drill" has become more than a political slogan: Exercise after exercise to prepare for cruise ship accidents or oil spills from any source will help identify gaps in Arctic marine safety infrastructure. The most obvious gaps are the lack of aircraft and icebreakers. The U.S. has just two icebreakers -- based thousands of miles away in Seattle -- that can tow a ship. Its nearest search-and-rescue Coast Guard helicopters are in Kodiak, based more than 1,000 miles from the Arctic Ocean. U.S. Coast Guard facilities on the Arctic coast are temporarily leased. During the Cold War, the U.S. appeared to be more interested in Arctic capability than it is today.

Networks of sensors helped determine where Russian submarines were operating in the North. Spies were parachuted in, and extracted by "Skyhook," reminiscent of a James Bond movie, off of Russian ice islands. Attack submarines more regularly plied the depths of the Arctic Ocean. Today, the Northern Command has the job of advocating for military resources the U.S. needs in the North, and if a recommendation for new icebreaking capacity has come forward, it has yet to appear in a president's Department of Defense or Homeland Security budget. The idea that leadership in sea power includes both military and commercial leadership seems to be lost; the last heavy icebreakers commissioned by the United States were justified for submarine rescues in the early 1970s. Slow and slower Governments are seldom entrepreneurial or visionary when it comes to establishing new global infrastructure. The Panama Canal, begun and stalled by the French in 1881, was taken over by the U.S. in 1904 and opened in 1914. The first proposals for the St. Lawrence Seaway came in the 1890s, but the first treaty between the U.S.

and Canada was signed in 1932, only to not be ratified. After more political somersaults in both countries, the seaway opened in 1959. Some U.S. reluctance to moving forward in the Arctic stems from those benefiting from the status quo: Today's waterborne container trade is dominated by a few large firms that have established a network of trans-shipping ports that circle the globe. Commodity shipments out of the Arctic, delivery of supplies to communities, and resource extraction sites now dominate Arctic shipping. It is usually ship owners and shipbuilders from China, Korea, Singapore and Norway who speak with vision about regular continent-to-continent container trade. When it comes to predicting which mariners will truly pioneer regular trans-Arctic shipping, some bet on upstarts, not big firms. Washington has some ideological reluctance to Arctic shipping as well. As the U.S. takes the chair of the eight-nation Arctic Council, it wants to focus on fighting climate change. Simultaneously promoting new business in this newly accessible ocean might come off as counter to the U.S. agenda at best, unseemly profiteering at worst.

But there is little scientific belief that a global climate agreement will restore lost ice to the Arctic Ocean, and icebreaker advocates tell us that Arctic shipping is here to stay, even if ice returns. There is even a green argument in favor of Arctic shipping. The distance savings -- and other efficiencies if vessel size is unconstrained by canal width and depth -- will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Others argue the Arctic ships could be asked (or told) to use cleaner fuels, such as liquefied natural gas. Furthermore, diplomatic attention in this region is often focused on other matters. Even the U.S., which has not ratified the United Nations Law of the Sea agreement, is preparing a claim for new subsurface land control. Russia's claim under that treaty would give it control of 45 percent of the Arctic Ocean bottom; the U.S. claim in the Arctic and in a few other coastal areas where the continental shelf extends past 200 miles would add undersea lands to U.S. territory offshore about twice the size of California. Resolving these issues should not be hard, but the question of who owns the Arctic takes a large amount of the attention nevertheless. Another diplomatic diversion is a fundamental disagreement over freedom of navigation in the Arctic.

Russia and Canada have both passed legislation asserting that the best routes in Arctic shipping -- the Northern Sea Route adjacent to Russia and the Northwest Passage through the Canadian archipelago -- are the internal waters of Russia and Canada. In principle, the U.S. and most seafaring nations reject their claims, forcefully but quietly. The National Strategy for the Arctic Region, signed by President Barack Obama in May 2013, insists that the U.S. will "support and preserve … international legal principles of freedom of navigation and overflight and other uses of the sea and airspace related to these freedoms …" The fact that the U.S. did agree in Law of the Sea negotiations to the terms of Article 234, which allows a coastal state with traditionally ice covered waters to regulate shipping for protection of the environment, should make things easier. The language seemingly would allow Russia to regulate shipping on the Northern Sea Route within its 200-mile limit, and Canada to require notification before vessels come through. For that matter, the U.S., if it wanted to, could use Law of the Sea principles to require itinerant vessels to file an oil spill prevention and response plan in waters near Alaska. To coastal Alaskans' dismay, it has not.

It is time to iron out this issue, either bilaterally or in a tribunal. Any solution should let the effect of Canada and Russia's internal waters claim -- a ship safety regime -- move forward, and establish a similar regime in waters near the U.S. Indeed, a requirement that ships coming and going through the Arctic Ocean pay for icebreaker assistance, for example, might be constructed in concert by six Arctic coastal states. Ships are coming anyway. The Coast Guard knows it. The Arctic Council's agreements on marine safety, plus adoption of a Polar Code by the International Maritime Organization in 2014, marked great progress on the agenda Arctic nations agreed to pursue when it published an Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment in 2009. The Coast Guard's proposal to establish a vessel-traffic system, with Russia, in the Bering Strait is another sign. Alaska's call for improved oil spill response rules for itinerant vessels, still a struggle after the 2004 shipwreck of the Malaysian-registered cargo ship Selendang Ayu in the Aleutians, has been met with only a minimal standard by the Coast Guard for some ships passing through the Aleutians and the Bering Strait.

Native subsistence hunters, plying the same waters for seals and whales, as well as some of the world's most productive fishing fleets, need more effective safety measures applied to passing ships. A National Security Presidential Directive, signed by President George W. Bush in 2009, seeks Arctic sea routes that are "safe, secure and reliable." But the real question is whether the U.S. will act on its goal by building ports and icebreakers. President Obama's commencement speech to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy this spring indicates the White House is looking hard at the issue. "I believe that our interests in the Arctic demand that we continue to invest in an enduring Coast Guard icebreaking capacity," he told the cadets. The key word for Arctic shipping is "reliable" -- in the transportation world, trains, planes, ships and trucks need to meet a schedule or customers go elsewhere. Still hidden in Arctic haze is a commitment by any nation, with the exception of Russia, to develop a business model that will attract the real investment necessary to make the Arctic Ocean a regular, working seaway. How reliable? What could an ideal Arctic shipping regime be like? At the headquarters of the St.

Lawrence Seaway in Montreal, a huge diorama pays tribute to the seaway that leads from the eastern edge of Quebec to the Great Lakes. A ship might use the seaway to ship grain from Chicago to Europe, or iron ore from Duluth to a steel mill in Germany. From the Great Lakes to the sea, ships cross the U.S.-Canada maritime border 23 times, but U.S. and Canadian leaders together promote this seaway to the world, and together offer reliability ship masters can depend on. Reliable Arctic shipping can happen two ways. The first course, currently happening, is controlled by the Russian's Northern Sea Route administration. Use of the Russian system has been, and will be, slow. Geopolitical concerns about over-reliance on Russia for energy and transportation will remain. Sanctions will deter companies, and the result will be that the primary users of the sea routes will be Russian firms exporting their energy and minerals to China. Call that the slow, dangerous course. An alternative approach is for the Arctic nations and other interested countries to work together, with or without Russia, to establish an icebreaker ship escort service across the Arctic. This requires thinking of the Arctic as a mutual business opportunity, like a jointly owned canal.

An Arctic shipping system has something to offer all participants. Trans-shipment ports might be constructed near the gateways, where cargo traveling trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific routes can interchange with Arctic lines. Dutch Harbor/Unalaska and Adak are two candidates on the Pacific; ports in Iceland, northern Norway, or Russia's Murmansk are contenders at the other end. Russia has a port on the Bering Sea, Provideniya, which serves as one port of refuge for ships in distress; the U.S. side is considering building up Port Clarence, north of Nome, or the shallower Port of Nome. Early calls for cooperation in northern shipping came from northern governors of Russian regions, Canadian territories, the state of Alaska and others -- a group called the Northern Forum, which seeks shipping not just for economic opportunity, but for reducing the high cost of fuel and other delivered goods in remote regions of the North. For the U.S. to play in this venue, it would need investments in icebreakers.

In response to a congressional inquiry, Alaska's last governor, Sean Parnell, said that AIDEA could potentially be involved in financing icebreakers, just as the same state agency -- profitably -- helped finance a new Coast Guard facility on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. As an intermediary, the state may find it easier to charge for icebreaker services where the federal government doesn't. (Shippers in the St. Lawrence system have learned that their costs of moving through ice depends on the luck of the draw -- as with overflights, Canada charges for icebreaking and the U.S. does not.) A recent Arctic Policy Commission report to the state Legislature laid out additional investments the state will foster -- make on its own account or get from others -- to get U.S. port infrastructure on the western and Arctic coast of the state. Mead Treadwell, Alaska's lieutenant governor from 2010 to 2014, was previously chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, appointed by President George W. Bush.

He is currently president of Anchorage-based Pt Capital, an Arctic-focused investment firm, and chairs a task force on shipping commissioned by the Arctic Circle, a nongovernmental organization operating across the Arctic. An earlier version of this appeared in the Harvard International Review. UPCOMING: Arctic shipping summit A three-day meeting in August at Anchorage's Hotel Captain Cook will focus on building partnerships that boost shipping and ports in the arctic. Hosted by Alaska Dispatch News publisher Alice Rogoff, the summit will including for Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson. Among the topics: establishing a task force to offer global shippers a regular, safe and reliable system; securing infrastructure investments; protecting hunting and fishing in Arctic waters that could be used by cargo ships. Details at info@alaskasummit.com. Subscribe to our Morning News newsletter About this author Russia Moves to Promote Northeast Passage through Arctic Ocean - SPIEGEL ONLINE Russia Moves to Promote Northeast Passage through Arctic Ocean Northeast Passage Russia Moves to Boost Arctic Shipping This year has seen a record number of ships pass through the Northeast Passage in the Arctic Ocean. Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing all he can to make the route even more attractive.

Comment The earth has rarely been as warm as it is today -- and it has never been this small. In the distant past, traveling from Hamburg to Shanghai by ship meant sailing around Africa, a journey of at least 28,000 kilometers (17,400 miles). A short cut became available in 1869, with the opening of the Suez Canal, an event so epochal that Giuseppe Verdi was asked to compose a hymn for the celebration. After that, the Hamburg-Shanghai route measured only about 20,000 kilometers. Now another hymn could be needed, albeit a Russian one. Global warming has led to the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice. Where the thick ice pack stretched off the Siberian coast in August only a few years ago, there is nothing but the gray and cold Arctic Ocean today. The ice cap off Siberia now almost completely disappears in the summer months. Although there are still isolated floes, the Arctic Ocean is navigable. Coastal ice vanished for the first time in the summer of 2005, and it has been disappearing every summer since 2007.

There was never as little Arctic ice as in mid-September 2012, and the ice has never melted as quickly as it did in the first half of July 2013, with an area twice the size of Bavaria disappearing every day. The Barents Sea is now open, as is the Kara Sea, and even the Laptev Sea and the Chukchi Sea are currently navigable without an icebreaker escort (see map). The ice cap only remains intact farther to the north. The record thaw in the polar region is giving hope to many ship owners, Russian politicians and energy companies like Gazprom and Novatek. As a result of climate change, a maritime route of only 14,000 kilometers now separates Hamburg and Shanghai. And an irresistible treasure lies buried about halfway along this route, in the virtually uninhabited but thawing permafrost of northwestern Siberia: one of the largest natural gas deposits on the planet. Euphoric Tones Adventurers and explorers have tried to conquer the legendary Northeast Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for more than 500 years. Many failed, drowned or froze to death.

It wasn't until 1879 that a Swedish expedition managed to cross the Northeast Passage for the first time. The Soviets, with the help of powerful icebreakers, managed to use the route a number of times after 1932, primarily to transport lumber and pelts. But the route never played a role in international maritime traffic. It remained sensitive -- politically, geographically and, most of all, climatically -- until today. Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently taken on euphoric tones when referring to the "Northern Sea Route," as the Russians call their section of the Northeast Passage. With the help of billions in infrastructure investments, Putin hopes to turn the route into the Suez of the north. In his words, the seaway along the tundra has a golden future as an "international trade route." But the only thing international about it will likely be the customers. The Russians insist that they control the entire Northern Sea Route, even though parts of it pass through international waters.

When Putin recently met with Sergei Frank, the director of the state-owned shipping company Sovcomflot, which is involved in the Northeast Passage, Frank was able to relay this piece of encouraging news to the president: "The new route is coming alive before our very eyes." Such words still sound brash today. Many polar settlements from the Soviet era have turned into ghost towns. If a ship were in distress in the region, it would take many days for rescue teams to arrive at the scene. Nor are their ship repair yards in the region should a vessel run into technical problems. Perhaps more concerning, there is also a lack of precise charts and modern meteorological equipment. And no one knows what to do if there were an oil spill. 'Far Greater Impact' It is clear, however, that even a leak of very small amounts of pollutants, be it oil or residue from a ship's diesel engines, could have dramatic consequences in the polar region. "Toxic substances have a far greater impact here than at other latitudes because they are degraded very slowly," says physicist Marcel Nicolaus of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the northern German port city of Bremerhaven.

It's been only four years since two German cargo ships used the polar shipping route for the first time. The Beluga Fraternity and the Beluga Foresight put out to sea from the South Korean port city of Ulsan in late July 2009 and reached Rotterdam in record time by traveling along the Siberian coast. In 2010, four ships braved the Northeast Passage, and 46 followed suit last year. Still, the voyage remains a massive undertaking for lack of a safe shipping channel. The trick is to navigate a ship through sea mile after sea mile of ice fields and shallow straits. In addition, each permit to travel the passage has thus far been preceded by a series of bureaucratic hurdles. This is expected to change radically, now that a new agency opened for business in Moscow in March. The Northern Sea Route Administration (NSRA) was created to develop infrastructure and substantially increase traffic along the route. As of Thursday, the NSRA had already issued permits to 431 ships to traverse the Northern Sea Route. The agency doesn't even expect an "ice class" from many ships, meaning they are allowed to enter the Arctic Ocean without a hull that is specially reinforced against ice.

The intercontinental highway through the polar sea has been open since July and will begin closing again in late October. Until then, cargo ships carrying ore, coal, fertilizer and grain, as well as supertankers carrying crude oil and liquid natural gas, will travel back and forth between Europe and the Far East. For the first time, Chinese freighters are now among the ships traveling through the Northeast Passage. The Yong Sheng (14,000 gross register tons) is scheduled to arrive in Rotterdam on Sept. 11. An Arctic Gas Port Freight volume is at about five million tons this year and is expected to triple by 2017. A French luxury cruise ship has now been given the green light to traverse the Northeast Passage, as has a yacht piloted by 74-year-old English sailor Tony Kearney, AKA "Arctic Tony." A 40-year-old icebreaker operated by Greenpeace, however, was twice denied a permit. Last year, the environmental organization used the Arctic Sunrise to board a Gazprom oil rig.

Most of the ships currently using the Northern Sea Route are Russian, while others are sailing under the flags of Panama, Liberia, Cyprus, Great Britain, China, Hong Kong, Antigua, France, Norway and the Netherlands. Reederei Nord, a Hamburg-based shipping company, is sending its oil tanker, Two Million Ways (40,000 gross register tons), through the polar sea. The company chose not to comment on the voyage. A large portion of polar traffic is not headed for the Far East, but for northwest Siberia. In the short Arctic summer, dozens of dredgers, excavators and other special vehicles are arriving off the coast of the Yamal Peninsula, where Russian gas producer Novatek is spending more than 15 billion to build the Sabetta Arctic port and an ultramodern liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal. When cooled to minus 160 degrees Celsius (minus 256 degrees Fahrenheit), natural gas is reduced to only one six-hundredth of its original volume. Starting in 2016, the Yamal gas will be transported to Europe via the Northern Sea Route.

Gas destined for the E.on gas company and the German market will also traverse this route, reducing the importance of pipelines. In a westerly direction, at any rate, says Novatek Director Frank, the company will be able to operate its shipping traffic all year long, no matter how much ice develops in the winter. In an easterly direction, however, the route will remain restricted to the summer months for now. The current navigable window is five months. But Novatek's Russian investors hope that as climate change progresses, the season could last up to eight months. 'Very Skeptical' Still, the eastern part of the sea route remains hazardous, even during the summer months. Weather forecasts are unreliable, and ice and fog command the full attention of crews. The NSRA generally requires ship captains to be accompanied by seasoned Arctic skippers while traversing the eastern section. Furthermore, many ships still need an icebreaker escort in the summer. Russia operates six nuclear-powered icebreakers, and a seventh ship is currently being built. Those who enlist the services of an icebreaker to use the Northeast Passage can expect to pay a hefty sum, partly because of the NSRA's somewhat murky fee structure.

But, as the Russians explain, the cost of several hundred thousand euros per cargo ship is offset by substantial savings. A voyage from Shanghai to Hamburg takes 35 days via Siberia -- up to 15 days fewer than through the Suez Canal. Fuel savings alone, say the Russians, are enough to offset the fees. Besides, they add, ships are not exposed to the risk of piracy in the north. As important as the Northeast Passage may become for transporting oil, gas, coal and ore, it is unlikely to significantly affect container shipping, in which on-time delivery is critical. Niels Harnack, managing director of the China Shipping Agency Germany, prefers to continue sending his ships through the reliable Suez Canal. Harnack says that he is "very skeptical" over whether a "reliable scheduled service" will be possible in the Arctic Ocean. "In the short and medium term," he adds, there will be "no shift in the classic shipping routes between Northern Europe and China." And in the long term? It is clear that ice will continue to disappear in the Arctic.

Experts believe that the North Pole will be completely ice-free in the summer months by as early as 2030, while others say that this won't happen until 2050 or 2080. In that case, both the Northeast Passage and the Northwest Passage, north of Alaska, which remains frozen today, will be open to shipping. The seaway across the pole would then be the shortest route between continents. And it would come with another advantage: No country could claim it exclusively for itself. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan Article... Will Arctic nations let Russia control Arctic shipping? Should they? - Harvard International ReviewHarvard International Review Will Arctic nations let Russia control Arctic shipping? Should they? 36(3) Spring 2015 , Eastern Europe , Economics , Features , North America , Politics , Western Europe Three icebreakers representing three different Arctic nations: the Russian Yamal, the CCG Louis St. Laurent, and the USCG Polar Sea. All three countries have important roles to play in Arctic shipping. Photo by Steve Wheeler. Public domain.

In August, 1981, our Russian hosts built a campfire on a bluff overlooking the Lena River, near Yakutsk, a region most Americans only know from its strategic position in the board game “Risk.” Under a bright midnight sun, we washed down frozen whitefish, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and stewed horsemeat with numerous toasts of Soviet champagne, vodka, and brandy, and dreamed out loud about what could happen in the Arctic. A boat steamed by, headed downstream toward the port of Tiksi on the Arctic Ocean. Wally Hickel, then between his service as U.S. Interior Secretary and his second term as Governor of Alaska, jumped up and waved his arms with excitement, explaining “that ship can turn west and go to Murmansk in Europe, east and go to Vladivostok on the Pacific. These Russians have shown how Arctic shipping can link the continents. The rest of us need to learn there even is an Arctic Ocean!” It no longer takes the reverie of a campfire to envision hundreds, if not thousands, of ship voyages happening each year over the top of the world. For the practical purposes of commerce, the world has a brand new ocean.

Mines and gas fields in Northwest Siberia and the Norwegian Arctic use Russia’s Northern Sea Route to expand their market options to the Pacific. Container ship owners – who currently use canals in Suez and Panama as shortcuts – are looking to a newly accessible Arctic to link Europe and Asia. China’s Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO) made an experimental trans-Arctic container shipment in 2013. In that same year, Asia’s largest shipping and trading nations — India, Singapore, China, Korea and Japan –successfully pressed to join the eight-nation Arctic Council as “observers.” Three changes in the Arctic have occurred in a generation: Arctic sea ice is thinner, icebreaking technology is better, and the supply of and demand for Arctic energy and mineral resources is bigger. While polar explorers have sought Arctic routes for centuries, nations in our time should work together now to offer a reliable international seaway in the Arctic. The world once coped with lengthy and dangerous shipping around two capes – Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope – before replacing them with the Panama and Suez canals.

Singapore made port investments, with Lee Kuan Yew’s vision in the 1960’s, and is today a major trans-shipment hub of Asia. In the Arctic, coordinated investments in icebreakers, ports, and promotion will make a huge difference for global shipping in a generation. The top of the world is no less ripe for infrastructure than the American West, after the Louisiana Purchase, before the transcontinental railroads. Perhaps the most effective model for an Arctic shipping regime is the St. Lawrence Seaway, operated by Canada and the US and linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. Arctic shipping will happen, but without strong Western participation, it is likely to happen poorly – with negative consequences for business reliability, the environment, energy access, and security. In the last decade, Western nations bent over backwards to keep Russia from having more opportunities to “turn off the tap” as pipelines were built to bring oil and gas from the Caspian Region. The Arctic basin contains 13 percent of the world’s potential oil and 30 percent of the world’s potential gas. Leaving Russia alone to shepherd shipping in the Arctic gives them even more dangerous leverage over global energy supplies.

Avoiding future conflict is in Russia’s interest, as well as our own; all nations would be served by greater international cooperation in Arctic shipping. Moreover, for many nations, Arctic shipping is a strategic business opportunity with high potential returns. Alaska, Canada, and Russia benefit daily, financially, from their Arctic territory in the rapidly growing international aviation market; overflights and cargo transshipment hubs make money – and much of the industrialized world benefits from shorter passenger and cargo flights. The same global benefits can arise from a determined effort to establish safe, secure and reliable Arctic shipping. Russia’s Arctic Shipping aspirations In 2011, the Russian Geographic Society invited Arctic experts from around the world to come to Arkhangelsk, the Russian Arctic port used to receive lend-lease equipment from the allies during World War II. The Society’s Chairman, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, convened a bevy of Russian cabinet members and governors whose territories cover the entire Russian northern coast. Putin spoke at length about Arctic shipping, which he believed would have the economic importance of the Suez Canal. He announced that Russia would build nine new icebreakers by 2020 and offer competitive tariffs to attract ships.

His ministry of emergency situations would build depots of oil spill response equipment along the Russian coast. His space agency would launch new communications, weather, and ice monitoring satellites to make sure the route is safe. His navy would establish new bases to make sure Russia’s northern coast is secure. International cooperation was invited, but the message was clear – Russia was going ahead, with or without the rest of the world. A map of Arctic shipping routes, including the Northeast and Northwest passages. As Arctic ice melts, these routes will become increasingly accessible. Image courtesy of the Arctic Council and Susie Harder. If you are the master of a ship with a cargo to bring to Europe from the Pacific Ocean, how do you get there today? If you head north, the Northern Sea Route (NSR) across the top of Russia is currently a better option, rather than the often ice-choked Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. A direct, straight over the pole route used by aircraft probably would not be your best choice now due to ice conditions, but it’s also possible. A company seeking to transport goods through the NSR would have to contact Russia’s Northern Sea Route Administration several months in advance.

Then, it would have to pay a tariff which can reach up to $500,000 a voyage. In 2013, close to 60 vessels made this trip, twice as many as the year before. In 2014, the numbers were down –due to delays in oil drilling on Alaska’s north coast as well as the “chilling” effect of Western sanctions against Russia. Nevertheless, Russia’s Northern Sea Route is open for business and, so far, offers the only regular icebreaker ship escort service in this part of the world. Rates are set to recover costs of the nation’s nuclear icebreakers, while leaving clients some savings from shorter times and distances. However, shippers also look at reliability, not just cost and distance, in selecting routes. Russia’s brand for reliability has never been strong in global transportation. For example, trips linking Europe and Asia along the 99-year old Trans-Siberian Railroad require switching railcar gauges and maintaining faith that the cargo won’t be diverted enroute. Legends of lost trains die hard.

Russia’s role in global aviation tells a brighter story – a large portion of flights linking Europe and North America to Asia and the Gulf countries fly through Russian airspace. However, Russia has been a cagey aviation partner. Russia publicly considered denying overflights last September in response to sanctions. It opted instead to maintain fees for airlines that are reported to reach $500 million USD a year. Alaska still holds the lion’s share of cargo transshipment for polar aviation. US reliability was established in the Cold War (Anchorage, Alaska is the world’s 4th largest air cargo airport due to polar flights), while Russia excluded many flights, and even shot down a straying flight off its Pacific coast, Korean Airlines 007, in 1982. Besides caviar, vodka, and unbranded resource commodities, it is hard to find a Russian service or product that leads in world markets. While Russia goes full throttle, other Arctic nations are ambivalent The Arctic Council and its predecessor, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, had convened foreign ministers every other year or so since 1991. However, Hillary Clinton’s decision to attend the 2011 meeting marked the first time the US Secretary of State participated.

The meeting in Nuuk, Greenland produced the first binding agreement among the Arctic eight — Russia, United States, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland – divvying up the Arctic region to assign responsibility in international waters for search and rescue. Tens of thousands of air passengers cross that region weekly, and more ships have been joined by summer cruise ships full of tourists in waters off Greenland, Alaska, and Canada’s Northwest Passage. Two years later, Secretary John Kerry kept the precedent, and signed a similar binding oil spill response agreement when the Council met in Sweden. The fact that Western diplomats have, with Russia, addressed Arctic Ocean safety is a good first step, but that should not be confused with addressing business opportunities. Under these two Arctic Council pacts, “Drill, baby drill” has become more than a political slogan: exercise after exercise to prepare for cruise ship accidents or oil spills from any source will help identify gaps in Arctic marine safety infrastructure. The most obvious gaps are lack of aircraft and icebreakers: the US has just two icebreakers – based thousands of miles away in Seattle – that can tow a ship; its nearest search and rescue Coast Guard helicopters are in Kodiak, based over a thousand miles from the Arctic Ocean.

US Coast Guard facilities on the Arctic coast are temporarily leased. During the Cold War, the US appeared to be more interested in Arctic capability than it is today. Networks of sensors helped determine where Russian submarines were operating in the North. Spies were parachuted in, and extracted by “Skyhook,” reminiscent of a James Bond movie, off of Russian ice islands. Attack submarines more regularly plied the depths of the Arctic Ocean. Today, the Northern Command has the job of advocating for military resources the US needs in the North, and if a recommendation for new icebreaking capacity has come forward, it has yet to appear in a President’s DOD or Homeland Security budget. The idea that leadership in sea power includes both military and commercial leadership seems to be lost in the noise; the last heavy icebreakers commissioned by the United States were justified for submarine rescues in the early 1970s. Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel delivers opening remarks at a forum for the Law of the Sea Convention hosted by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Atlantic Council in 2012. Photo by Sun Vega. Public domain. Governments are seldom entrepreneurial, and hardly visionary when it comes to establishing new global infrastructure.

The Panama Canal, begun and stalled by the French in 1881, was taken over by the US in 1904 and opened in 1914. The first proposals for the St. Lawrence Seaway came in the 1890s, but the first treaty between the US and Canada was signed in 1932, only to not be ratified. After more political summersaults in both countries, the Seaway opened in 1959. Some US reluctance to moving forward in the Arctic comes from those benefiting from the status quo: today’s waterborne container trade is dominated by a few large firms who have established a network of trans-shipping ports which circle the globe. Commodity shipments out of the Arctic and delivery of supplies to communities and resource extraction sites in the Arctic now dominate Arctic shipping. It is usually ship-owners and ship-builders from China, Korea, Singapore and Norway who speak with vision for bringing about regular continent-to-continent container trade; when it comes to predicting which mariners will truly pioneer regular trans-Arctic shipping, some bet on the upstart rather than the big firms. Washington has some ideological reluctance to Arctic shipping as well.

As the US takes the chair of the Arctic Council this spring, it wants to focus on fighting climate change; simultaneously promoting new business in this newly accessible ocean might come off as counter to the US agenda at best, unseemly profiteering at worst. But there is little scientific belief that a global climate agreement will significantly restore ice to the Arctic Ocean, and icebreaker technologists tell us that Arctic shipping is here to stay, even if ice does return. There is even a green argument in favor of Arctic shipping; the distance savings – and other efficiencies if vessel size is unconstrained by canal width and depth – will reduce greenhouse gas use. Others argue the Arctic ships could be asked (or told) to use cleaner fuels, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG). Furthermore, diplomatic attention in this region is often focused on other matters. Even the US, which has not ratified the United Nations Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) agreement, is preparing a claim for new subsurface land control. Russia’s claim under that treaty would give it control of 45 percent of the Arctic Ocean bottom; the US claim in the Arctic and elsewhere would add a territory twice the size of California to the map.

Resolving these issues should not be hard, but the question of who owns the Arctic takes a large amount of the attention nevertheless. Another diplomatic diversion is a fundamental disagreement over freedom of navigation in the Arctic. Russia and Canada have both passed legislation asserting that the best routes in Arctic shipping – the Northern Sea Route adjacent to Russia and the Northwest Passage through the Canadian archipelago – are the internal waters of Russia and Canada, specifically. In principle the US and most seafaring nations reject their claims, forcefully but quietly. The National Strategy for the Arctic Region, signed by President Obama in May of 2013, insists that the US will “support and preserve … international legal principles of freedom of navigation and overflight and other uses of the sea and airspace related to these freedoms…” The fact that the US did agree in Law of the Sea negotiations to the terms of Article 234, which allows a coastal state with traditionally ice covered waters to regulate shipping for protection of the environment, should make things easier. The language seemingly would allow Russia to regulate shipping on the Northern Sea Route within their 200-mile limit, and Canada to require notification before vessels come through.

For that matter, the US, if it wanted to, could use UNCLOS principles to require itinerant vessels to file an oil spill prevention and response plan in waters near Alaska. To coastal Alaskans’ dismay, it has not. It is time to iron out this issue, either bilaterally or in a tribunal. Any solution should let the effect of Canada and Russia’s internal waters claim – a ship safety regime – move forward, and establish a similar regime in waters near the US. Indeed, a requirement that ships coming and going through the Arctic Ocean pay for icebreaker assistance, for example, might under Article 234, be constructed in concert by six Arctic coastal states. Ships are coming anyway. The Coast Guard knows it. The Arctic Council’s agreements on marine safety, plus adoption of a Polar Code by the International Maritime Organization in 2014, marked great progress on the agenda Arctic nations agreed to pursue when it published an Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment in 2009. The Coast Guard’s proposal to establish a vessel traffic system, with Russia, in the Bering Strait, is another sign.

Alaska’s call for improved oil spill response rules for itinerant vessels, still a struggle after the 2004 shipwreck of the Selendang Ayu in the Aleutians, has been met with only a minimal standard by the Coast Guard for some ships passing through the Aleutians and the Bering Strait. Native subsistence hunters, plying the same waters for seals and whales, as well as some of the world’s most productive fishing fleets, need yet more effective safety measures from passing ships. A National Security Presidential Directive, signed by President Bush in 2009, seeks Arctic sea routes that are “safe, secure and reliable.” A book could be written on what each of those words mean, but the real question is whether the US will act on its goal by building ports and icebreakers. The key word for Arctic shipping is “reliable” – in the transportation world, trains, planes, ships and trucks need to meet a schedule, or else customers go elsewhere. Still hidden in Arctic haze is a commitment by any nation –with the exception of Russia — to develop a business model that will attract the real investment necessary to make the Arctic Ocean a regular, working seaway.

What could an ideal Arctic shipping regime be like? At the headquarters of the St. Lawrence Seaway in Montreal, a huge diorama pays tribute to the seaway which leads from the Eastern edge of Quebec to the Great Lakes. A ship might use the seaway to ship grain from Chicago to Europe, or iron ore from Duluth to a steel mill in Germany. From the Great Lakes to the sea, ships cross the US-Canada maritime border 23 times, but US and Canadian leaders together promote this seaway to the world, and together offer reliability ship masters can depend on. “Reliable” Arctic shipping can happen two ways. The first course, currently happening, is controlled by the Russian’s Northern Sea Route Administration. Use of the Russian system has been, and will be slow. Geopolitical concerns about over-reliance on Russia for energy and transportation will remain. Sanctions will deter companies, and the result will be that the primary users of the sea routes will be Russian firms exporting their energy and minerals to China. Call that the slow, dangerous course. An alternative approach is for the Arctic nations and other interested countries to work together – with or without Russia – to establish an icebreaker ship escort service across the Arctic.

This requires thinking of the Arctic as a mutual business opportunity, like a jointly owned canal. An Arctic shipping system has something to offer for all participants. Transshipment ports might be constructed near the gateways, where cargo traveling trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific routes can interchange with Arctic lines. Dutch Harbor/Unalaska and Adak are two candidates on the Pacific; ports in Iceland, Northern Norway, or Russia’s Murmansk are contenders at the other. Russia has a port on the Bering Sea, Provideniya, which serves as one port of refuge for ships in distress; the US side is looking at building up Port Clarence, north of Nome, or the shallower Port of Nome, for another. The earliest calls for cooperation in northern shipping came from northern governors of Russian regions, Canadian territories, the State of Alaska and others – a group called the Northern Forum, which seeks shipping not just for economic opportunity, but for reducing the high cost of fuel and other delivered goods in remote regions of the North. For the US to play in this venue, it would need investments in icebreakers, and the State of Alaska has offered to be the banker.

A recent Arctic Policy Commission report to the state legislature laid out additional investments the state will foster –make on its own account, push for from others –to get US port infrastructure on the western and Arctic coast of the state. The United States could begin a “St. Lawrence Seaway approach” to the Arctic by inviting other icebreaker owners, including Canada, Russia, Finland, Korea, China, and even private companies, to start a service, set a schedule. With a visionary ringleader, the world’s ice-faring nations could set up regular trans-polar convoys, to and from the Bering Strait to Northern Europe and return. Ships from the US and Canadian coast guards cooperate to survey the sea floor. Increased cooperation between the US and Canada is crucial to the development of an effective Arctic shipping regime. Photo by Patrick Kelley and the US Coast Guard. Public domain. In the business of raising capital, it’s good to have an anchor tenant. Shell Oil is now the anchor tenant for Edison Chouest Offshore’s commercial icebreaker, the Aiviq, and has two more underconstruction. Russia’s icebreaker fleet now includes ships built by Korea and Finland.

It is likely that LNG shipments from the Yamal Peninsula and similar shipments from Canada may help justify icebreaker construction. A number of companies have proposed building and leasing icebreakers to the US to support Arctic marine safety. It would also be in Russia’s interests to participate in such a cooperative effort. An international consortia will, by its nature, promote reliability, which is not part of Russia’s brand right now. It could help prevent confrontation in the North – not only over control of energy routes, but over the last major territorial arguments left in the North, which is the question of internal waters of Russia and Canada. Russia might want to avoid such a confrontation in the Arctic, by joining forces with other powers to open this seaway and promote it to the world. Next fall, another series of “Arctic Circle” meetings will be held commissioned unofficially by Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, Iceland’s President, in Anchorage, Reykjavik, and Singapore. Shipping will be on the agenda for these nongovernmental, “track two” conferences happening simultaneously with the US chairmanship of the Arctic Council. The Anchorage meeting intends to convene ports from around the North, similar to the way port communities of the St.

Lawrence Seaway get together. Government officials of all eight Arctic nations will be invited to attend and participate, and maybe – just maybe – the North will figure a way to get down to business. Share On

Question: What is the name of the seaway through the Arctic from Europe, north of Asia to the Pacific Ocean?
Answer: North East Passage