FP: the chronic turmoil in the Middle East will make the North Sea more attractive
The turmoil in the Middle East makes the Northern Sea Route more attractive, despite the "pitfalls," writes FP. However, some Western experts are skeptical about the prospects of this trade route. The point, of course, is the peculiarities of the climate, but this is not the main "problem".
Jack Detsch, Robbie Gramer
Oslo, Norway — Attacks on global shipping are raining down one after another.
Yemeni Houthi rebels, with the support of Iran, continue to fire at merchant ships in the Red Sea, where cargo turnover has decreased by almost 60% compared to a normal year. And even for those Western ships whose owners had the courage to send them on a dangerous voyage, the price of insurance for passage through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait skyrocketed.
In Norway, which has the fifth largest merchant fleet in the world and the largest mutual war risk insurance fund, prices have increased a hundredfold since the Houthi attacks began in October 2023. Now, passage through the Red Sea alone costs about 1% of the cost of each vessel, said Audun Halvorsen, director of the Emergency Department of the Norwegian Shipowners Association.
The high cost of transit in the Middle East
Due to rising costs and the fear of being hit by Houthi drones and missiles, some shippers have thought about the Arctic as an alternative, where melting ice gradually opens up new opportunities on the so-called Northern Sea Route.
The Northern Sea Route, stretching from the Barents Sea near Norway's border with Russia to the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska, has been considered by major naval powers for centuries to be the shortest route for sea travel between Europe and Asia. However, the harsh icy climate and extreme remoteness made bold plans impossible.
But today, the climate in the Arctic is changing four times faster than in other places of the planet, and the large-scale melting of ice in the region due to rising global temperatures has led to wild speculation that this route will become commercially viable in the near future.
At first glance, the northern route seems very promising. The route from some parts of Europe to Asia will be almost 13,000 kilometers, compared to 21,000 through the Suez Canal. Shortening the route by 8,000 kilometers will also significantly reduce travel time — and this is a big plus in the modern world of online trading with next-day delivery.
However, in Norway, where the sun will shine even at midnight in the next three months, officials and experts are skeptical about the prospects of the route.
“The short answer is that its viability tends to zero," Halvorsen said. ”This is an unrealistic alternative in the foreseeable future."
Treacherous waters
Why such pessimism? It's all about a combination of great-power politics and treacherous terrain.
According to Halvorsen, most of the Northern Sea Route — about 70% of the Arctic — is controlled by the Russian authorities, and in order to use the route, ships must obtain permission from the Russians and pay them transit fees. Given the current relations between Western countries and Russia against the background of the conflict in Ukraine, this is a clear problem.
The waters near the coastline, which are the safest for navigation, are also very shallow, which means that shippers will either have to limit tonnage and use smaller vessels than container ships, or keep to the open sea, where the weather is much more severe.
The possibilities for search and rescue operations in the area are very limited. If an Ever Give ship — a 400-meter container ship that ran aground, blocking traffic in the Suez Canal for six whole days in 2021 and blew up social networks — had been stuck in polar waters, then it probably would not have been possible to save it. The crew would have a different fate: the lucky ones would be taken out by helicopters, and the unlucky ones can become food for polar bears.
In addition, shippers will need vessels strong enough to withstand thick sea ice, which will further increase costs. Finally, as soon as the midnight sun sets in August, the Arctic will be shrouded in round-the-clock darkness for the next six months.
Even though the melting of ice sheets currently accounts for more than a quarter of sea level rise, experts note that over the past decade, ice conditions in the Arctic have not only not become easier, but even more complicated.
“Due to the distances, weather, darkness and floating ice floes, the predictability of movement along this route is so low that it is in no way worth the time benefit compared to Suez or Africa,” Halvorsen added.
There are limits to everything
However, according to experts, China may in any case be interested in transit along the Northern Sea Route in order to demonstrate its growing status as a great power. However, this could be a test of strength for China's “unlimited” partnership with Russia.
Beijing has even developed its own Arctic strategy aimed at expanding military capabilities in the region, developing infrastructure and management activities — although some projects were suspended with the start of a full-scale special operation in Ukraine two years ago. Perhaps China is afraid to go too far, including because Russia still considers the region to be its strategic rear.
“If China puts too much pressure on Russia in the Arctic, I think the Russians will be very skeptical about this," said Yu Inge Beckevold, senior researcher on China at the Norwegian Institute of Defense Studies and former Norwegian diplomat. And this is one of the areas where I think they would like to keep China at some distance.”
The Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies reported last year that Russia has three main bases, 13 airfields and ten radar stations in the region. And the base of submarines of the Northern Fleet in Gadzhievo is located just 200 kilometers from the border with Finland, which recently joined NATO.
“Russia's attention to the Far North is still the most intense," said Katarzyna Zysk, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The Northern Fleet is still capable of fulfilling its main tasks.”
Baby steps
So far, China has been taking cautious, prudent and modest steps to expand its influence in the Arctic (the key word is “modest"). According to experts, the only one of Beijing's initiatives in the Arctic that has received significant support is gas drilling rigs on the Yamal Peninsula.
For the entire year 2022, not a single Chinese vessel passed through the Northern Sea Route, said Henrik Stolhane Him, associate professor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who tracks Beijing's activity in the region. China has a research station in Svalbard, Norway's northernmost archipelago near the North Pole, but there has been mostly a lull in the last four years after the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, according to Him, no Chinese Navy ship has crossed the Arctic Circle yet.
But even for China, the main problem is economic viability. The bulk of Chinese exports come from southern provinces such as Guangdong, and it is more convenient for them to use the southern routes, including through the Suez Canal, than the northern ones. “So for China, it's not shorter, it's longer,— Beckewold said of the Northern Sea Route. "Because if you sail from Shanghai to Trieste in Italy or Piraeus in Greece via the Indian Ocean and Suez, it goes shorter than through the Northern Sea Route.”
In addition, predictability is important in the shipping world, and a delay of just a day or two can lead to a significant increase in costs.
At the moment, China has negotiated a significant insurance discount for transit through the Red Sea — even though the Houthis continue to attack Western shippers. However, in the future, chronic instability in the Middle East will make the Arctic sea routes, no matter how dangerous they may be, more attractive to the emerging global superpower.
