Russian gas tanker forges Arctic passage to China

MOSCOW (AFP) - – A Russian gas tanker is this month making a historic voyage across the famed Northeast passage as receding ice opens up an elusive trade route from Asia to the West sought for centuries by explorers.

The 114,564-tonne tanker Baltica, escorted by the world's two most powerful nuclear ice breakers, sailed from Russia's northernmost port of Murmansk on August 14.

The largest vessel to ever navigate once-impassable route, the Baltica is due to deliver its cargo of gas condensate to China in the first weeks of September.

Russian television has shown the tanker making cautious progress through chunky sheets of ice in the wake of the steel-rimmed ice breakers, as a polar bear loped across ice floes within shouting distance of the ships.

"Never before has a ship of this size passed via the Northeast sea passage," said Captain Alexander Nikiforov in an interview with Russian channel NTV.

Russia hopes to make the Arctic route a competitor to the Suez Canal and increase cargo traffic along its Siberian coast from two millions tonne a year now to 30 million tonnes -- profiting off taxes and the lease of its unique fleet of nuclear ice breakers.

bluesquid wrote:Not a surprise Palin rose to prominence, as a former mayor of Wasilla AK, the future hub of rail traffic in North America. Why her future son in law is running for mayor next.

World transport is an emerging bubble. Whether its the Baltic undersea railway connecting Buffets grid to the "Second Transcontinental Railroad". Or shipping via container ships, and Dubai's investments, and expansion at both the Panama and Suez canal. A lot of money to be made there.

Russia's new path supplying china would be very easy to protect in the advent of war.