20.04.00
The North-East Passage leads from Northern Europe around North Cape and along Siberia through the Bering Strait to Asia. It shortens the 11,000-12,000 nautical mile sea route to Asia by about 4,000 miles, or almost 7,400 km. According to British oceanographers, this route is ice-free in the summer months and thus navigable for merchant shipping without icebreaker assistance. It is argued that this is the result of global warming owing to the greenhouse effect.
"We considered this subject in detail some years ago. Despite being substantially shorter than the routes through the Suez or Panama Canal, the North-East Passage does not represent a viable alternative for container liner shipping," argues Helmut Stelter, head of ship management at Hapag-Lloyd Container Line. There are various reasons for this. Firstly, the route can be used only in summer for two to three months, ice conditions permitting. The ships deployed must be ice-strengthened, which means that they must be built accordingly or undergo a retrofit. Costs, including increased fuel consumption as a result of the increase in the ship's own weight, remain almost unchanged, even if because of ice conditions in the north the ship has to use southern routes during most of the year. Moreover, freighters have to reduce speed because of the danger of drifting ice floes, which again noticeably offsets the time advantage. In any case, the shorter transit times apply mainly for Japan and Korea - in the southern regions of Asia, the time difference between the northern and southern route tends to be evened out.
A crucial factor is that liner shipping must give customers a sound planning basis. Containerships ply specific routes and call at ports on fixed days. Such a fixed schedule could scarcely be kept to on the North-East Passage. Hapag-Lloyd now offers shippers six departures a week between Europe and Asia and five on the Pacific between Asia and North America, as well as a service from Asia through the Suez Canal to North America, seven weekly links on the North Atlantic and further services to Latin America, Australia and the Indian subcontinent. These very comprehensive liner services are supplemented by an extensive feeder network with many thousand of links annually.
A final consideration is that shipping lines using the North-East Passage would forgo an important management option. Hapag-Lloyd ships plying between Europe and Asia call at ports in the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, South-East Asia and the Far East, loading and unloading containers at all these transhipment hubs. This means that slots on the vessels can be utilized several times, which would not be possible on the northern route owing to the lack of markets. Helmut Stelters concludes: "The North-East Passage may be an interesting subject for researchers, but it is not (yet) an attractive proposition for liner shipping."
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