Every day, the Arctic slips further in an unstable state. The last sign: a Russian icebreaker and a liquid natural gas vessel crossed the North Sea Route in February for the first time due to the exceptionally low and weak sea ice cover.
The new Arctic is free from the past, and the ship trip is a great red flag for what the future may hold for the region, as countries head into the region and plant their flag on the vast resources it holds.
The tanker, Christophe de Margerie, crossed the Arctic on a route from a port of liquefied natural gas on the Yamal Peninsula, in western Siberia, to Jiangsu, China, in the northern province of Shanghai. The trip took him across six arctic seas, four of which had help navigating with the icebreaker, 50 Let Pobedy. On February 19, the two ships arrived safely at the Sabetta terminal, marking the end of the voyage.
Rosatom, a Russian state-owned nuclear energy company that owns the nuclear powered icebreaker, released a video last week detailing the two ships’ voyage through the Arctic with music that would not be out of place as a scene in Avengers where all the superheroes come together. On a Press release from Sovcomflot, the Russian shipping company that owns the tanker, made an equally encouraging assessment of the passage.
“As a result of the initial North Sea Route trip, completed by Christophe de Margerie in May 2020, just like the current North Sea Route trip, navigation in the eastern part of the Arctic has been practically doubled, ”said Igor Tonkovidov, CEO of Sovcomflot.
While Russian companies may be enthusiastic about changing their fortunes, this is bad news for the planet for several reasons. TThe new Arctic route is possible due to the rapid rise in temperatures. The region the ships traversed saw their old sea ice shrink to practically nothing. Older, thicker ice tends to be more resistant to warmer ocean and air temperatures. Without it, younger ice is more likely to breakabove and even when intact, it tends to be more fragile. The Arctic trip is a shocking sign of this new reality.
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Ice loss has intensified last year, with the sea ice reaching the the second smallest extension already recorded. The fall in the seas in northern Siberia was particularly acute due to the summer heat wave that sent temperatures spiraling above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) and caused the The Yamal Peninsula tundra will explode. The heat also cooked sea ice, and the end result is that this winter’s ice is acceptable. In fact, Siberian ice failed to reform on schedule last autumn.
But this is not just a single event. Rosatom noted in the video caption that cargo traffic along the North Sea Route is expected to increase more than three times to 80 million tonnes per year. Meanwhile, Sovcomflot is excited to receive 18 “new generation” icebreaker liquid natural gas tankers between 2023 and 2025 to service an Arctic gas project capable of producing 20 million tonnes per year.
Oil and gas companies are waiting for the opportunity to extract fossil fuels from the Arctic for decades. Climate journalist Amy Westervelt documented in a series of tweets how American companies applied for patents for specially built equipment to access and extract oil and gas from the Arctic already in the 1970s, a time when knew the impacts of climate change, but sowed public doubts about the causes. Arctic drilling has been a business opportunity for decades, fueled by companies that now you can profit from it while being involved in suffering and misery all over the world. ONE report released Last month, the Climate and Security Center noted that the Russian plan for the Yamal Peninsula and other parts of the Russian Arctic is to make it “a gas production and export zone on the same level as Qatar and the USA”, the that would essentially be a climactic game about.
In addition to the risks to the climate, more activity in the Arctic also increases the risk of geopolitical and ecological crises. The Biden government announced that it would treat climate change as a matter of national security, and the Arctic could be ground zero in many ways, as it is the part of the world that changes most quickly and the one where countries are already fighting for resources. Russia, Canada, and Denmark has everything claimed the North Pole as its own, for example. Thirteen non-Arctic countries are observers to the Arctic Council, including emerging powers like China and India. The interest in the region by companies and governments is high, and it is almost certainly not out of the kindness of their own hearts. Last month’s report by the Center for Climate and Security concluded that even if the world continues to warm up within the Paris Agreement range, it can still “generate broader international security risks with highly uncertain consequences”, whether through intentional aggression or misunderstandings like more commercial traffic increases the chances of conflict.
At the same time, more commercial activity also increases the risk of ecological disaster. Although the Arctic is more accessible, that doesn’t mean it’s exactly easy to clean crews there in the event of an oil spill or other accident. The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, a spill that happened in the relatively accessible Gulf of Mexico, is still impacting the region 10 years after the fact. The Arctic is a fragile place with even more to lose if a spill happens there. Even in the absence of a leak, icebreakers can still have a detrimental effect about the region’s wildlife.
All of this to say that last week’s successful trip along the North Sea Route is a sign of impending calamity.