Arctic Ice Cap

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Jay, when he says that he does not think we will see a great new northern sea route coming into play within the next 10 years. I suggest it will be quite a few years beyond that. Most of the voyages that have been made round the north-east passage rather than the north-west passage, which is over the top of Russia, have been experimental. We can go back to 1997 when a Finnish tanker made the voyage. More recently, as the noble Lord said, two German freighters made the voyage but not, as he said, from Vladivostok to Holland; in fact, they came from South Korea and went over the top to Rotterdam. They stopped off on the way at Novyy in Yamburg province which meant they had icebreaker escort and had to take Russian ice pilots.

This year, a Danish bulk carrier “Nordic Barents” carried 41,000 tonnes of iron ore from Kirkenes on the Norwegian-Russian border to Qingdao in China. The Russian shipping company Sovcomflot sent a relatively large tanker—117,000 tonnes deadweight—the “SCF Baltica”, loaded with 70,000 tonnes of gas condensate from Vitino and Murmansk to Ningbo in China in 22 days. She was also escorted by three icebreakers.

Sovcomflot is preparing to send an even bigger tanker—162,000 tonnes—on a trial voyage next year. However, here we come up against draft restrictions. At the moment the Sankov and Sannikar Straits are restricted to 12.5 metres and 13 metres respectively and larger ships, drawing more than 15 metres, will be forced to go further offshore into higher latitudes, where the risk from floating icebergs is greater.

Companies which have sent ships around the north have said that they are very satisfied—it cuts 4,000 miles off the voyage, it saves them paying Suez Canal dues and saves the piracy problems. If a much larger amount of shipping was to go round the north of Russia, and if one was to believe from WikiLeaks’ revelations that Russia is a mafia state, I can see various Russians becoming very interested in what was going around their shores and there is nobody there to help ships, unlike going through the Gulf of Aden.

One possible drawback to the northern sea route is attracting the attention from the green and climate change lobbies. One report suggests that the release of CO₂ and engine particles—that is, black carbon or soot as we know it—from diesel engines in a sensitive area as regards climate change could lead to an increase in global warming.

Other reports suggest that up to 2 per cent of global shipping traffic could be using northern sea routes by 2030, rising to 5 per cent by 2050. To put that in context, today 4 per cent of world shipping uses the Suez Canal—that is an enormous amount of shipping. To be quite honest, I cannot see it happening for a very long time.

The other thing to take into account, which has not been mentioned, is that at the moment, with global warming, we have a two-month window in effect for shipping but the winter is still frozen over. Shipping is not going to suddenly take to using these Arctic routes. I think the likelihood is that it will be reserved for bulk cargoes, both wet and dry, mainly exports from Russia. The main container trades, I would suggest, are very unlikely to start using these northern routes. I want to give an example of the mileages—Hamburg to Yokohama going by the northern sea route saves about 4,000 miles; to Hong Kong you save about 1,000 miles and to Singapore the distances are exactly the same.

Container shipping is a very complex web these days and ships pick up cargo all over the place. Let’s face it—they are not going to get any cargo in northern Russia, so I think they are going to stick to their proven routes for some time to come.