For the first time, two commercial shipping vessels have completed a journey along Russia’s Northeast Passage without the need for icebreakers.
"The two merchant ships belonging to Beluga Shipping Gmbh were able to make the cost-saving voyage by the fabled Northeast Passage because of the reduction in the polar ice cap due to global warming, the company said."
The good news: the Northeast route cuts the 11,000 nautical mile trip from Asia to Europe down to 7,000. The bad news: Beluga claims (without any hint of irony) this will "yield substantial savings in fuel costs and reductions in CO2 emissions,” thus reversing the process which made the whole trip possible.
4 comments:
Somewhere, Al Gore is crying...more than usual.
Trade is going to shift to the Arctic. Much better there than the long, circuitous Suez-Malacca-Panama route, which is bottlenecked at three points and has pirates off East Africa and Indonesia. Russia's northern coastline will become host to several transportation hubs.
I've already made reservations for a surf and sand getaway to Chukotka.
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