Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s speech at the strategic session on the development of the NSR was twofold. On the one hand, there is a project for 20 trillion rubles and there are Russian investors: Vostok Oil, Novatek, Gazprom Neft, Norilsk Nickel, Severnaya Zvezda. They plan to increase cargo transportation and thereby provide the Northern Sea Route with a load so that it began to earn and develop.
On the other hand, it is noticeable that the prime minister is counting on the appearance of foreign investors, not Chinese, but at least Indian. It was for them that the port of Tiksi was opened, where now, finally, it is allowed to receive a foreign merchant fleet. Because the NSR is not bad for Russians, but it is too local history, which is unlikely to pay off in the format of purely personal use.
But there is a problem. More precisely, a number of problems. Carrying small bulk carriers and tankers from the Indian Ocean through the Arctic is not as profitable as superships. And shallow Arctic ports along the entire Northern Sea Route cannot receive superships. Now Tiksi is waiting for an investor who will turn the naturally shallow NSR into deep water. And at the same time, it will rebuild the entire berthing infrastructure and terminals. In addition to Tiksi, another 15 large ports in the Arctic are waiting for updates.
It is also customary to wait for the weather there, and the conditions for winter posting and ice thickness change annually. As long as traffic jams from ships are being collected on domestic flights, the international load of the NSR in its current form will not physically be able to handle it.
The investment plans of all parties are the most common so far, there is funding for 2 trillion for the coming years, but this is not enough, even if funds are not scattered across all projects. The NSR is not getting younger, just like its semi-military rusty and secret infrastructure, built back in the USSR. 5,600 km of the NSR are 70 ports that provide not only a growing cargo flow (in 2012, they dreamed of transporting 50 million tons per year along the NSR, now it is 190 million), but also provide 20 million residents of the North with everything they need through northern delivery.
Navigation along the NSR is needed all year round, and now it is provided by only 7 nuclear-powered icebreakers, and they are still very lucky. The input of “Leader” and others is shifted for reasons beyond the control of manufacturers. It remains to be wondered how, at the height of privatization in 1993, the Baltic Shipyard launched the most hard-working and reliable nuclear-powered icebreaker “50 Years of Victory” today. Given that the icebreakers “Vaigach” and “Taimyr” were also built by Finnish shipbuilders in the early late 80s and 90s and are fully equipped with Wärtsilä equipment, these vessels are the first on the list to be retired for a long repair.
The Prime Minister and all participants of numerous sessions, meetings and hearings on the problems of the Northern Sea Route and the development of the Arctic know all this. The number of various monitoring programs and digital projects, communication systems and other invisible, but voracious construction projects around Arctic logistics is already off scale, their funding goes into the billions. They are being eaten by an army of officials and “effective managers” from the Ministry for the Development of the Far East, which duplicates the functions of Rosatomflot and Rosmorrechflot in managing the NSR, administrations of the Arctic regions, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Digital Development, structures like the Russian Geographical Society and other grant-eaters.
There is a growing number of strategies that do not contradict, but complement each other, and all together create a feeling of complete confusion and non-obviousness in the country’s Arctic economy. Russian business always lives and works in such conditions. But Asian investors are unlikely to invest very large and very long money in projects with uncertain guarantees, terms and conditions. Today, the Northern Sea Route needs one, but a realizable international case, and not the ostentatious vivacity of officials. And he is not.
