The Northern Sea Route (NSR) above Russia saw record traffic in 2019 but the lion’s share was generated by the Yamal natural gas plant at the Port of Sabetta, which exported a total of 20.5 million tons of LNG.
Other large cargo generators along the route were Nornickel’s plant on the Yenisey River that shipped 1.5 million tons of ore and Gazprom Neft’s Novy Port field, which shipped 7.7 million tons of petroleum, the latter transported by the company’s own fleet of six Arc7 ice-class tankers.
According to Nikolay Monko, the Acting Director of the NSR Administration, a total of 31.5 million tons of cargo was moved along the route last year, an increase of 56.7 percent over 2018 figures, but only 697,200 tons was transited across the entire route by ships sailing either east or west between the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya and the Bering Strait, a distance of 3,480 miles.
