Northern Sea Route: The new port at Sabetta on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula is on schedule to be completed on time in 2016, Russian sources are saying, at which point it will open up the Northern Sea Route and could slash three weeks off the journey from the Pacific to the West. The port is a key element in the massive Yamal LNG project but will in time also provide berths for foreign ships using the Northern Sea Route, the shipping lane that runs from the Kara Sea off Siberia’s Arctic coast to the Pacific Ocean in the east and Scandinavia and ultimately the US in the west. The $73m port extension is expected to increase Sabetta’s annual cargo capacity from three million to 30m tonnes. It also transpired last week that the Swedish company Rice Capital had invested RUB 600m in a 180-km railway line to run to Sabetta from Bovanenkovo. The Siberian Times
Northern Sea Route to be open for business by 2016
Northen Sea Route