Northeast Passage
Transit shipping activity

Due to its harsh climatic conditions and the low population density, the NEP has had relatively little activity. The NSR portion of the NEP experienced its highest levels of activity during the Soviet era. The NSR greatly developed as a heavily subsidized domestic route, with traffic peaking in 1987 with 6.58 million tons of cargo carried by 331 ships over 1306 voyages. With the end of the Soviet Union and its subsidies, the NSR traffic collapsed to 1.5–2 M tons of cargo.

Since the early 2000s, the thickness and area extent of the Arctic sea ice has experienced significant reduction, compared to the recorded averages. This has led to an increase in transit shipping. In 2011, four ships sailed the entire length of the NEP, 46 in 2012, and 19 in 2013. The number of trips is still very small compared to the thousands of ships each year through the Suez Canal. Mainstream container shipping is expected to continue to overwhelmingly use the Suez route, while niche activities like bulk shipping is expected to grow, driven by the mining industries of the Arctic.

Nevertheless, the cargo traffic is steadily growing every year. The research shows that the NSR-SCR combined shipping scheme can be more competitive than the use of the Suez Canal Route only. If the shipping company provides sufficient loading on the NSR, uses a reliable ice-class vessel for navigation and the price of crude oil is high, the economic advantage of the NSR-SCR combined shipping scheme is obvious. Ice thickness directly affects the shipping cost. Now, when the Arctic ice is slowly melting due to weather conditions, the cost of icebreaking service is expected to reduce. Also, vessels of some ice classes can sail on the NSR independently. That is why the NSR icebreaker escort fee may be several times lower than the SCR toll.

State Corporation Rosatom assumes the possibility and functions of the NSR and ensures the safety of navigation on the high technological level. Besides organizing the navigation along the NSR and the icebreaking services with the world's only nuclear icebreaker fleet, Rosatom is planning to implement the Arctic Ice Regime Shipping System (AIRSS) methodology. This system will represent a digital space that will provide various services to cargo carriers, shipowners, captains, insurers, and other participants in the logistics market on the NSR. In particular, it involves issuing permits for the passage of vessels, monitoring, dispatching, and managing the work of the fleet. The single digital platform will collect information from all the available sources, for example, hydrometeorological data, the location of ships and icebreakers, port congestion. As a result, users will receive an advanced "ice navigator" that will allow to plot a precise route in view of the changing ice conditions of the NSR. In other words, the study of Sibul et al. proposed a path-finding algorithm for the NSR strategic assessment. It uses real weather as input and find the optimal shipping route.
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