Every day the Arctic slides further in an unstable state. The latest sign: A Russian icebreaker and ship for liquefied natural gas crossed the Northern Sea Route for the first time in February due to extremely low and poor sea ice cover.
The new North Pole area is detached from the past and the ship’s travel is a huge red flag for the future that the region may hold, as countries across the region rush in and plant their flag over the vast resources it contains.
The tanker, Christophe de Margerie, traversed the Arctic via a route that ran from a liquid natural gas port on the Yamal Peninsula in western Siberia to Jiangsu, China, the northern province of Shanghai. The voyage took it across six Arctic seas, four of which had help navigating with the icebreaker, 50 Laat Pobedy. On February 19, both ships reached the Sabetta terminal safely, marking the end of the voyage.
Rosatom, a Russian state-owned nuclear power company, released a video last week outlining the two ships’ voyage across the Arctic to music that would not be out of place scene in the Avengers where all the superheroes meet. In a Press release of Sovcomflot, the Russian shipping company that owns the gas tanker, issued an equally cheerful assessment of the corridor.
‘Due to the early voyage of the Northern Sea Route completed by Christophe de Margerie in May 2020, as well as the current trip to the North Sea route, seafaring in the eastern part of the Arctic region has virtually doubled, ”said Igor Tonkovidov, CEO of Sovcomflot.
Although Russian companies may be amazed at their changing fortunes, it is bad news for the planet for several reasons. Tthe new route across the Arctic is possible due to rapidly rising temperatures. The region that passed through the ships saw that its old sea ice had diminished to almost nothing. Older, thick ice is more resilient warmer ocean and air temperatures. Without it, younger ice packs are more likely to break-on and even when it is intact, it is more fragile. The journey across the Arctic is a shocking sign of the new reality.
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The loss of ice increased last year, with sea ice that second lowest measure ever recorded. The drop in the sea north of Siberia was particularly sharp due to the summer heat wave that caused the temperature turn above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) and causes the Yamal Peninsula tundra explodes. The heat also has boiled sea ice, and the fact that this winter’s ice pack is acceptable is the end result. Indeed, Siberian ice pack could not reform on schedule last fall.
But it’s not just a one-time opportunity. Rosatom noted in the video caption that cargo traffic along the Northern Sea Route is expected to more than triple to 80 million tonnes per year. Meanwhile, Sovcomflot is excited to receive 18 “new generation” of ice-breaking liquefied natural gas tankers between 2023 and 2025 to deliver an Arctic gas project capable of delivering 20 million tons per year.
Oil and gas companies have been waiting for the opportunity to extract fossil fuels from the North Pole for decades. Climate journalist Amy Westervelt documented in a series of tweets how US companies applied for patents for specially built equipment to access oil and gas from the Arctic as far back as the 1970s, a time when they knew the effects of climate change but sowed public doubt about the causes. Drilling in the Arctic has been a business opportunity for decades, fueled by companies that now benefit from it while trapping suffering and misery around the world. A report released noted last month from the Center for Climate and Safety Center that the Russian plan for the Yamal Peninsula and other parts of the Russian Arctic region makes it ‘an area for gas production and exports on an equal footing with Qatar and the USA’, which in essentially a climate game would be over.
In addition to the risks to the climate, more Arctic activities also increase the risk of both geopolitical and ecological crises. The Biden government has announced that it would address climate change as a national security issue, and the Arctic could be landless in many ways, as it is the world that is changing the fastest and the countries where there are already many resources. Russia, Canada, and Denmark it all claim the North Pole as their own, for example. Thirteen non-Arctic countries are observers to the Arctic Council, including rising powers such as China and India. The interest of both businesses and governments in the region is great, and it is almost certainly not out of the kindness of their own hearts. Last month’s Center for Climate and Security report found that even if the world persisted within the scope of the Paris Agreement, it could still drive a broader international security risk with major uncertain consequences, whether through deliberate aggression or misunderstandings. more commercial traffic. increases the chance of conflict.
At the same time, more commercial activities also increase the risk of ecological disasters. Although the Arctic is more accessible, this does not mean that it is exactly easy to clean crew there would be an oil spill or another accident. The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, a landslide that occurred in the relatively accessible Gulf of Mexico, is still impact the environment 10 years after the fact. The Arctic is a fragile place with even more to lose if a spill should occur. Even without waste, icebreakers can still be a adverse effect about the wildlife in the region.
All this means that the successful voyage across the North Sea Road last week is a sign of impending disaster.