Icebreakers are Russia's way to compete with the Suez Canal competition

Russia considers the Arctic to be more of a region with excess reserves of raw materials and trade opportunities than it sees as a fragile area vulnerable to the effects of climate warming.

In order to ensure its supremacy in this region, Moscow launched a fleet of nuclear icebreakers there.

The ship "50 Lit Pobedy" (50 years of victory) left the port of Murmansk for the North Pole this summer.

Its captain, Dmitry Lobosov, assures an AFP journalist on board the ship that Russia has a special role in the Arctic.

"One third of our land lies beyond the Arctic Circle," he says.

Our ancestors knew how to navigate the frozen waters.

And we continue to do so successfully," he said, noting the increasing importance of his mission with the "evolution of natural resources".

Russia, headed by Vladimir Putin, has made the extraction of the Arctic's oil, gas and raw materials a strategic priority.

The region constitutes a major source of Russian exports of liquefied natural gas produced by the Russian company "Novatek" and the French group "Total" in the Yamal Peninsula.

"The Arctic has huge potential. In terms of resources, we are talking about 15 billion tons of gas and 100,000 billion cubic meters of gas. Enough for tens and even hundreds of years," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in September.

Suez Canal competition

In contrast, its yield depends in part on the Northern Sea Route or the Northeast Passage.

This Arctic route, half the way through the Suez Canal, is supposed to facilitate the delivery of hydrocarbons to Southeast Asia, by passing through the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.

Previously, this route was navigable only in the summer, but it has become possible to take it more and more with the retreat of glaciers due to climate warming.

But the deployment of nuclear-powered Russian icebreakers in the region is also essential.

Expert at the Institute of Energy and Finance Sergey Kondratiev explains that this fleet, under the supervision of the atomic energy giant "Rosatom", is unique in the world because "only Russia has such a route - the Northern Sea Route - where these icebreakers are in demand."

In March 2021, when a giant container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal and disrupted navigation, Moscow took the opportunity to say that the Arctic route was no longer a distant dream but a developing reality.

In the next five years, Rosatom is expected to increase the number of nuclear icebreakers it owns, from five to nine.

The goal is for the quantities of goods transported through the Arctic to reach 80 million tons by 2024 and 160 million tons in 2035, compared to about 33 million tons in 2020.

Although this figure is still very far from the one billion tons of cargo transiting the Suez Canal, Sergey Kondratiev points out that giants of the Russian economy such as Gazpromneft, Norilsk Nickel and Rosneft all need the North Pole and therefore " They will all need a fleet of icebreakers."

For example, Rosneft is developing a huge oil project called "Vostok Oil" on the Taimyr Peninsula, with expected impressive profits.

Don't stop for a minute

Commander Lobosov asserts, "If in the eighties and nineties we escorted a ship and then stopped to wait for the next ship, now we don't stop for a minute."

And sailing in the Arctic is expected all year round, in 2030, and not just for the Russians.

Rosatom reports that the Danish shipowners Maersk and the Chinese Cosco are taking the Arctic route.

President Putin welcomed the "interest" of international actors in this sea route and stressed Friday that he "does not want to exclude anyone from it."

The Russian nuclear group estimates the cost of developing this trade route at 735 billion rubles (8.5 billion euros at the current exchange rate) until 2024, of which 274 billion were pumped by the state.

Environmental organizations, for their part, denounce this race to hydrocarbons, which has caused several environmental disasters, and the growing presence of atomic reactors in the Arctic.

Rosatom acknowledges that “development projects in such a fragile ecosystem entail risks that infrastructure must contribute to mitigating,” noting that nuclear propulsion is cleaner than conventional fuels.

But the group asserts that "with economic opportunities so great for the local population as well as for the global economy, it will be difficult not to take advantage of these reserves."

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