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2015 | Book

The Northern Sea Route: Introduction and Overview Read chapter Read first chapter

The Northern Sea Route

A Comprehensive Analysis

Editor: Marcus Matthias Keupp

Publisher: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

The topic, "Northern Sea Route" has become a highly relevant point on the strategic radar screen of many business and military leaders, since global climate change now opens up a hitherto impassable sea route and positions it as a strategic alternative to the Suez route. Add to this the discovery of many easily extractable commodities and metals in the arctic area. For entrepreneurs, this setting offers new opportunities and risks; for academics, a new research context emerges. The book discusses the strategic, economic, logistic, judicial and military challenges of the future great game in the arctic sea.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
The Northern Sea Route: Introduction and Overview
Abstract
Not too long ago, Sven Hedin’s euphoria about the return of the Vega, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s vessel by this seafarer that had just completed the first motorized passage through the Northern Sea Route (NSR), was replicated in our time. Since the beginning of the 20th century, principal commercial maritime routes had changed very little (Verny and Grigentin, 2009). This status quo was challenged when, in 2007, the M/V Beluga Transit and the M/V Beluga Fraternity each completed the first modern passage of a container ship through the NSR.
Marcus Matthias Keupp
Arctic security, sovereignty, and rights of utilization: Implications for the Northern Sea Route
Abstract
Both Russia’s Arktika submarine expedition of 2007, which planted a titanium Russian national flag on the seabed below the North Pole, as well as the prediction of significant hydrocarbon and mineral resources in the Arctic waters and continental shelves (United States Geological Survey, 2008) sparked a flood of alarmist analyses and sensationalist media coverage. Brosnan et al. (2011) provide a detailed frequency analysis of this inundation. These perspectives predicted tension and armed conflict in the Arctic in the wake of significant regional rearmament, as well as a ‘scramble’ or ‘gold rush’ for resources based on the speculation that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) could not be ‘seamlessly applied.
Marcus Matthias Keupp
International Legal Dimensions of the Northern Sea Route
Abstract
The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is the most important route of navigation in the Russian Arctic. While the NSR is navigable without icebreakers only for some months during Arctic summer, it is expected that due to climate change and the increasingly rapid melting of the ice in the Arctic, the NSR will become increasingly important for international shipping. Moreover, if global warming continues, the direct transpolar passage could be navigable by 2040.
Philipp Kastner
The potential of container vessel operation on the Northern Sea Route: Nautical, regulatory, and operative issues
Abstract
Extant literature dealing with operative and economic aspects of container shipping in the Northern Sea Route (NSR) has concentrated on the analysis of a particular vessel type. Table 1 demonstrates that this type corresponds to a small, ice-classed container ship such as the COSCO Yong Sheng, whose voyage from Dalian to Rotterdam in August, 2013, constituted one of the first known container shipping operations by way of the NSR.
Marcus Matthias Keupp, Ramon Schöb
Through the Northern Sea Route by Stena Polaris: A logbook
Abstract
When the Russian ice advisor Sergey and I arrived in Vardø, high up in north-eastern Norway, we were looking forward to finally embark on the Stena Polaris—a 65,000 dwt iceclassed tanker. With great excitement, we boarded the small boat that was to take us to the tanker that drifted some nautical miles from shore. We had been warned the previous evening that the weather forecast was quite bad, and we were unsure if we could embark. As we passed the breakwaters, we realized that the small boat could not handle the big waves well. When we saw the Stena Polaris vaguely in the horizon, we could already find that she was rolling quite heavily. After approximately 30 minutes of cutting through waves three to four meters high, we finally made it to the Stena Polaris, or so I believed, because the saltwater spray all over the boat’s windows barely enabled us to glimpse outside.
Patrik Svahn
The capacity potential of the Northern Sea Route by 2050
Abstract
Despite a great number of past contributions, research concerning the future utilization of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as a result of the long-term growth of global transport volume is missing. This chapter, based on the author’s dissertation originally published in 2009 in German, which at the time of writing constituted one of the first attempts to respond to this research gap (Leypoldt, 2009).
Patrick Leypoldt
The Northern Sea Route as an alternative container shipping route: A hypothetical question or a future growth path?
Abstract
Commercial ship financing is a century old, yet a risky business. It typically involves high leverage, with up to 80% of the vessel’s building cost financed by loans (Stopford, 2009; Verny and Grigentin, 2009), and is mostly organized by establishing a one-ship company that only holds one large asset (the ship itself) in its books. To securitize his loans, the financer will typically encumber this ship with a mortgage. Many one-ship companies (including their ship managers) do not have access to the vessel’s cargo. Their revenue is generated only by the operation and chartering of the vessel they own. Therefore, often not only does the ship itself but also the charter party contract serve as collateral for the loan.
Andreas Mietzner
Go west: The insignificance of eastbound shipping for Russia’s extractive industry
Abstract
To date, most maritime traffic on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) carried bulk goods and commodities (Mietzner, 2015 – this book), and the Russian extractive industry is a major producer of bulk traffic. Hence, future commodity exports (mineral ores, oil, and gas) from the Russian Arctic may increase traffic and transport volume on the NSR. In this chapter, we analyze the extent to which (if any) this may be the case, stratifying documented traffic by route and destination. Finally, we assess probable future developments.
Marcus Matthias Keupp, Ramon Schöb
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
The Northern Sea Route
Editor
Marcus Matthias Keupp
Copyright Year
2015
Electronic ISBN
978-3-658-04081-9
Print ISBN
978-3-658-04080-2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-04081-9