Ten Years of International Shipping on the Northern Sea Route: Trends and Challenges

• Author: Björn Gunnarsson, Arild Moe
• Position: None
• Pages: 4-30

© 2021 Björn Gunnarsson and Arild Moe. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Com-

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Citation: Björn Gunnarsson and Arild Moe. “Ten Years of International Shipping on the Northern Sea Route: Trends and

Challenges” Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 12, 2021, pp. 4–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v12.2614

Arctic Review on Law and Politics

Vol. 12, 2021, pp. 4–30

4

*Correspondence to: Björn Gunnarsson, email: bjorn.gunnarsson@nord.no

Peer-reviewed article

Ten Years of International Shipping

on the Northern Sea Route:

Trends and Challenges

Björn Gunnarsson*

Nord University, Centre for High North Logistics, Business School, Norway

Arild Moe

Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway

Abstract

Analysis of detailed statistics shows remarkable uctuations in the volume and composition of

voyages on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) along the northern coast of Russia since international

use began in 2010. There has been strong growth in destination shipping between the Arctic and

ports outside the region, but transit shipping between the Pacic and the Atlantic has not experi-

enced the growth many had anticipated. Explanations are found in international market conditions

as well as in the management of the NSR, with important lessons for the future development of

different shipping segments. Shipping companies from several countries took part in the period up

to 2019, but they seem to have become less central in the current phase of NSR shipping, which is

dominated by the transport of hydrocarbons out of the Arctic. Russia expects international transit

to pick up later. However, Russia alone cannot determine the volume of international trafc: it is

the international shipping industry that will assess the balance of factors and conditions, and con-

clude if and when the shorter Arctic routes are safe, efcient, reliable, environmentally sound and

economically viable in comparison with other routes.

Keywords: Arctic shipping , transit shipping, destination shipping, maritime transport,

maritime logistics, North-East Passage, Russia, Arctic natural resources

Responsible Editor: Øyvind Ravna, Faculty of Law, UiT The Arctic University of

Norway

Received: September 2020; Accepted: November 2020; Published: February 2021

Ten Years of International Shipping on the Northern Sea Route

5

1 Introduction

The Russian-governed Northern Sea Route (NSR) is the key section of the North-

east Passage between northwest Europe and northeast Asia. It has attracted growing

international attention for several decades now, as the combination of diminishing

ice cover and Russian interest in promoting trafc has created opportunities for

foreign shipping companies in transit voyages between the Pacic and the Atlantic,

as well as in the transportation of resources from the Arctic to world markets. This

article will analyze the extent to which this sea route has become connected to the

world economy over the last ten years, and what lessons can be drawn.

Most of the NSR research literature has focused on the use of the sea route for

trans-Arctic transit between the Pacic and the Atlantic. The obvious advantages of

using the NSR as a maritime trade route between ports in northwest Europe and

northeast Asia are shorter transport distance (30%–50% less) and reduced sailing

time (14–20 days) compared to the Suez route, assuming the same sailing speed.

Several studies over the past ten years have examined the economic viability of the

NSR in comparison to the traditional Suez route, for different types of cargo.1 A few

scholars have evaluated and assessed transit statistics on the NSR: Moe did so for

2011–2013;2 Humpert and Marchenko for 2013;3 Lasserre and Alexeeva conducted

a transit-trend analysis for both the NSR and the Canadian Northwest Passage for

2007–2012;4 and Zhang et al. analyzed transit data on the NSR combined with port

call information from the Russian Arctic.5

However, there are also other aspects of international shipping on the NSR. Its

role as a corridor to bring energy resources westwards to Europe and eastwards to

Asian markets has come into focus in recent years with the rapid development of oil

and LNG projects in West Siberia.6

Both transit shipping and destination shipping to foreign markets represent a con-

nection between the sea route and the international economy, whether shipping oper-

ations are carried out by Russian or foreign companies. But international shipping

companies’ access to the NSR and their opportunity to offer shipping services consti-

tutes a separate and third aspect of internationalization. In Soviet times the area was

in practice closed for foreign vessels. After the turn of the century, many expected the

NSR to become an interesting activity area for international shipping companies.

With these three aspects of internationalization in mind – international transits, des-

tination shipping to foreign markets and access for international shipping companies–

the overarching research question in this article is: Does the development of shipping

on the NSR represent increased internationalization in the use of the sea route?

Detailed statistics on NSR shipping spanning several years have not been available

earlier. This has prevented in-depth analysis of the shipping activity which actually

has occurred. This study presents the statistics now available and assesses what can

be learned from ten years of international shipping on the NSR, 2010–2019. More-

over, we seek to identify the total volume of shipping over this period, the type of