Two German container ships have navigated the Russian Northeast Passage across Arctic waters from the Pacific for the first time in a voyage considered impossible until a few years ago.
The journey through formerly frozen seas promises to transform Russia's neglected Siberian coast and reduce transport costs for goods taken from Asia to the European Union. But environmentalists say the opening of the route shows the speed at which the polar ice caps are melting.
The merchant vessel Fraternity passed Novaya Zemlya, regarded by Russia as the official exit point of the Northern Sea Route, at the weekend. Its sister ship Foresight is due to follow in a few days after being delayed by bad weather in Siberia. Their journey to reach the Dutch port of Rotterdam by late this month will complete a crossing that started in Ulsan, South Korea.
The ships, each loaded with 2000 tonnes of cargo and destined for a Siberian power plant, set off for the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok on July 23. They arrived two days later.
The ships made rapid progress but were joined by Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers as a precaution along the most hazardous section of the Northeast Passage along the Vilkizki Strait.
The crew said they had encountered little or no ice for most of the week-long journey through the passage, noting only the occasional iceberg.
In the Vilkizki Strait, the most northerly point, they found «some rather massive ice fields» but also a corridor of water 100 nautical miles (185km) wide where ice concentrations had declined to as little as 10 per cent.
The ships docked at Novyy Port/Yamburg last week, unloading their cargo on to barges to be transported down the Ob River in Siberia to the oil and gas centre of Surgut.
Beluga Group president Niels Stolberg said that the company had six contracts for delivery of more cargo into Siberia. The pioneering 12,000-tonne ships would be followed next year by a new generation of vessels that were almost twice the size as demand expanded.
«We are all very proud and delighted to be the first Western shipping company to have successfully transited the legendary Northeast Passage and delivered a sensitive cargo safely through this extraordinarily demanding sea area," he said.
The journey cut 3000 nautical miles off the traditional 11,000-mile route from Korea to Europe via the Gulf of Aden and Suez Canal and shortened the journey by 10 days.
