Russia Uses Nuclear Icebreakers to Send Oil to China Through Arctic Ocean

OAO Sovcomflot, Russia’s largest shipper, and OAO Novatek aim to cut the time it takes to deliver oil and gas to China, sending their first cargo through the Arctic rather than the Suez Canal.

A 70,000 metric ton cargo of gas condensate left the port of Murmansk for Asia on Aug. 14, Mikhail Lozovoy, a spokesman for Novatek, Russia’s second-largest gas producer, said today by telephone from Moscow. He declined to give the specific destination.

Russia is seeking to tap Asian demand for oil and gas to help justify developing remote deposits in the Arctic and eastern Siberia. The country is building an oil pipeline to the Pacific and may construct a natural-gas link to China. OAO Gazprom, the gas export monopoly, began producing liquefied natural gas, fuel cooled for shipment by tanker, in Russia’s Far East last year.

“We decided to try the new supply because Southeast Asia is a prime market for oil and gas,” Sovcomflot First Deputy Chief Executive Officer Evgeny Ambrosov said today by phone. “Even with the accompanying icebreakers, the passage will break even. It’s true that it won’t give especially material returns.”

The shipment marks the first time an aframax class tanker, which can carry more than 100,000 tons deadweight, has made the northern journey to Asia, Sovcomflot said in an Aug. 14 statement on its website. Two nuclear powered icebreakers will travel with the tanker, it said.

The route through the Bering Straits cuts the distance to the as yet unidentified port in China to 7,000 nautical miles from more than 12,000 via the Suez Canal, Sovcomflot said.

“The fact that there are two icebreakers for a small ship would imply that there is no economic justification for the route, for condensate or LNG,” Keith Bainbridge, a partner in charge of gas at RS Platou LLP, an offshore shipping broker and investment bank, said today by e-mail from London.