Season’s first oil-tanker sails Northern Sea Route
Painted with shark teeth the nuclear powered icebreaker “Yamal” sails from Murmansk to escort the oil-tanker ”Perserverance” towards China.
The sailing season along the Northern Sea Route has never before stared earlier as the Arctic sea ice heads for another major melt.
It is the Belgium owned oil-tanker “Perseverance” is loaded with 70.000 tons of oil condensate that earlier this week sailed from Murmansk towards the north east. The tanker is this summer chartered by the Russian oil company Novatek, reports Petroarctic, a network of suppliers for petroleum projects in the north.
”Perseverance” holds ice-class 1A and is expected to be at port in China around July 20, sailing nearly half the time the vessel would have spent from Murmansk to China if sailing the Suez canal.
Several other ice-classed oil tankers are waiting in the Kola bay for the sailing season to start. Novatek plans to ship 110.000 tons of oil condensate along the north coast of Siberia with the oil tanker “Vladimir Tikhonov” later this summer. In total, Russia’s nuclear powered icebreaker fleet will reportedly escort some 15 larger bulk and oil tankers along the Northern Sea Route this year.
As previously reported by BarentsObserver, the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice before the melting season started this year was at its lowest ever measured.
