The Northern Sea Route: will it be the route of the XXI centure?

TO MAKE THE ROUTE SERVE THE ECONOMY

Nikolai Smirnov,
Deputy Minister for Transport, Russia

         The Northern Sea Route is a navigable waterway that passes along the Russian coast through the seas of the Arctic Ocean. Despite the financial difficulties, the Northern Sea Route administration and the Ministry for Transport are doing everything possible to make the route work for the economy of the North. We will enter the 21st century with automatic control systems of ship movement. There are already four stations in the western sector that allow us to determine the location of an icebreaker or a transportation vessel automatically. In the year 2000, we will install the last one, and we already have electronic maps and other technical means for this purpose.
         The state transportation fleet is certainly obsolete. Moreover, all its tankers were left in Latvia some time ago. That is why the Ministry for Transport has been looking for a private ship-owning company that could begin the development of the Arctic region. We have found such a company: LUKoil. This company has developed a program for building ten ice-class tankers. Two of them, Volgograd and Perm, have already been put into operation, and the rest will be completed before the end of the century. These ten tankers will supply oil to and from all locations on the Arctic coast.