Earth Equity News

German Ships Completing First-Ever Commercial Northeast Transit. By Andrew Kramer and Andrew C. Revkin, NYTimes, September 11, 2009. "For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming. The ships started their voyage in South Korea in late July and will begin the last leg of the trip this week, leaving a Siberian port for Rotterdam in the Netherlands carrying 3,500 tons of construction materials. Russian ships have long moved goods along the country's sprawling Arctic coastline. And two tankers, one Finnish and the other Latvian, hauled fuel between Russian ports using the route, which is variously called the Northern Sea Route or the Northeast Passage. But the Russians hope that the transit of the German ships will inaugurate the passage as a reliable shipping route, and that the combination of the melting ice and the economic benefits of the shortcut -- it is thousands of miles shorter than various southerly routes -- will eventually make the Arctic passage a summer competitor with the Suez Canal... The Russian government technically opened the Northeast Passage for international vessels after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but no commercial cargo carriers have until now ventured all the way across. Nikolai A. Monko, the head of the Northern Sea Route Administration in the Russian Transport Ministry, said the policy now was to promote the route. The ministry, he said, is considering lowering the flat fee charged for icebreaker escort and rescue if needed. The goal in part is to generate a revenue stream for the country's six-vessel nuclear icebreaker fleet that escorts convoys through the passage, and to pay for fixed costs like navigation beacons, he said."