August 5, 2021

The nuclear icebreaker fleet and all projects on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) are developing “even faster than we planned,” said Mr. Alexei Likhachev, Director General of the State Atomic Energy Corporation “Rosatom”, at a working meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 4, 2021. He addressed the President with a proposal to develop a large container transportation corridor based on the NSR waterways (as follows from the transcript of the working meeting published on the Kremlin’s website).

“We … see very serious growth in all three areas: this is the actual icebreaking support of our export projects – oil, gas, coal, metallurgical; this is, in accordance with your instructions, an increase in domestic cabotage, that is, transportation within our huge country, within the territory, along the Northern Sea Route; and we are counting on a large increase in transit, ”said Alexei Likhachev.

He stressed that Russian projects in this area are of great interest in the world. This is facilitated by the growth of world trade, and incidents like the one that happened in the Suez Canal.

“And we would like, with your consent, to start developing a large-scale container transportation corridor on the basis of our Northern Sea Route project. On the one hand, we will use the entire infrastructure of the NSR that has already been created, we are already spending money on it – both budget money and state corporations’ financial assets”, suggested Mr. Likhachev.

“On the other hand, this is a completely new level of business, a completely new level of economic positioning of both the “Rosatom” state corporation and our entire country. Moreover, this is an objective benefit for the world economy. In this sense, we see certain possible deficiencies in icebreaker support, we have prepared appropriate proposals, and we will present them to you today”, he noted. “Rosatom” is the unified infrastructure operator of the Northern Sea Route in accordance with the “NSR Infrastructure Development Plan until 2035”, approved by the government of the Russian Federation.

Source: https://portnews.ru/news/316649/