Western sanctions and restrictions do not seem to be able to stop Russia and President Vladimir Putin's plans to develop the Northern Sea Route into an important international trade route.

Overview of the Nordic Transport Centre at Nord University CHNL Provided to NRK, it shows that for every 20 Septembers so far this year, there have been 67 transits via the Northern Sea Route, carrying almost 2 million tonnes of cargo.

In the whole of 2023, 2.15 million tons were transported via the Northern Sea Route.

With several months left in the season, it is expected that in 2024, a much larger volume will be moved than this, perhaps closer to 2.5 million tonnes.

There may also be means of transport that cannot be registered.

Meanwhile, Russian LNG exports continue in full, and are less subject to Western sanctions.

“Plagiarism” – does it happen too?

– We see cases of so-called AIS spoofing of ship traffic, Kjell Stokvik, Managing Director at CHNL, wrote in an email to NRK.

This means that the full distance of the ship is not recorded in the international rules of the movement of ships such as marine traffic.

“We recorded strange movements that we could not detect,” Stokvik writes.

It may be that you want to avoid penalties or criticism because you are using ships that should not, strictly speaking, operate in areas with ice.

The Ukrainian attack has changed global trade.

Almost all transportation now goes to and from China, a good example of the changes in global trade following Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

China-Russia trade It has nearly doubled since 2020, with the increase being particularly strong since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, primarily due to the export of raw materials such as oil.

– This is because the shipping market in the West and around the Atlantic is closed to oil transport by ship, due to sanctions, senior researcher Arild Moe at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute tells NRK.

– But commercially, this is unlikely to be particularly profitable for Russia. The costs of transporting oil over such long distances, often all the way from Baltic ports and via the northern sea route, are much higher than if it were delivered to ports in Europe, says Mo.

Via the northern sea route, 13 ships have transported oil from fields in northern Russia to China so far this year.

This is equivalent to more than 1.33 million tons of crude oil, more than two-thirds of the total transport volume along the Northern Sea Route.

Increased costs for Russia

According to Arild Mo, this oil must be transshipped at ports such as Murmansk, making transportation via the Northern Sea Route expensive.

What is new this year is that an oil tanker headed from the Priarzlomnaja platform in the Pechora Sea directly to China, Kjell Stokvik tells NRK.

– Russia does not have enough large oil tankers designed to transport through ice-filled waters, Mo says.

– So safety could be in question when traffic to China is now increasing strongly, says Mo. From the Russian side, criticism of security has been dismissed.

At the same time, attempts to send goods from other countries, such as South Korea and Japan, via the Northern Sea Route to Europe have ended.

Thus, raw materials trade to China constitutes the largest volume of ocean transport in the North.

But it is also worth noting that there were also 13 ships carrying containers from China to Russia. Three of them went via the Norwegian coast via the Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg.