Page 16 - Respond 2018 Magazine

14

Gas tanker crosses

thawing Arctic without

icebreaker for first time

By Megan Darby

Sovcomflot vessel cut through thinning sea ice on the northern sea route to carry its cargo
of fuel from Norway to South Korea in record time

A commercial ship has crossed the Arctic’s northern sea by global warming. State company Rosatomflot reported
route without an icebreaker escort, in the first such voyage a doubling in demand for its nuclear icebreaker escorts
logged by Russian administrators. between 2015 and 2016.

After embarking on her maiden voyage from Moscow on 31 Spears said: “There has always been a window in the
July, the Christophe de Margerie completed the northern sea summer period where we have been able to go through
route in record time: six and a half days. She carried a cargo there with an icebreaker escort. Now, that window is
of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Norway to South Korea getting a little bit longer. That obviously reflects different
in 19 days, about 30% quicker than a typical passage by the climatic conditions.”
Suez canal.
Designed to plough through sea ice up to 2.1 metres thick,
“It was a significant thing to order this vessel, it was a the Christophe de Margerie can operate independently and
significant first, it had not been done by anybody before,” not only in the summer months, giving her an edge over
Sovcomflot spokesperson Bill Spears told Climate Home. competitors. The Cypriot-flagged vessel is named for the
former chairman of French oil major Total, who died in a
Maritime traffic along Russia’s northern coastline is plane crash at a Moscow airport in 2014.
increasing in tandem with industrial developments, enabled

The Christophe de Margerie is capable of sailing through ice up to 2.1 metres thick (Pic: Sovcomflot)