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Deputy Minister: Northern Sea Route freight traffic to reach 160 million tonnes by 2035

In November, Rosatom said the main freight growth in 2019 was due to the Yamal LNG project and due to the Arctic Gates oil field

ST. PETERSBURG, December 5. /TASS/. The Russian government plans that the freight traffic in the Northern Sea Route (NSR) will reach 160 million tonnes by 2035, which is twice more than what the government plans for 2024, Deputy Minister for Development of the Far East and Arctic Alexander Krutikov told the forum dubbed Arctic: Present and Future.

Russia’s nuclear agency, Rosatom, supervises the Northern Sea Route federal project. Under the project, the freight traffic should grow to 80 million tonnes in 2024. In November, 2019, Rosatom’s press service said this year’s plan to transport 26 million tonnes along NSR was met ahead of the plan.

"The active development of natural resources will push transportation along the Northern Sea Route, which means growing infrastructures and navigation," the official said. "Taking into account this years’ decisions, I do not doubt the rate of 80 million tonnes would be reached in 2024."

"Moreover, by 2030 it will grow to 120 million tonnes, and by 2035 - to 160 million tonnes," he added.

Over coming ten years, the freight transported in the Northern Sea Route will be "practically exclusively from Russian senders," he continued. "And their demand for icebreakers, safety, and communication will form the year-round navigation at the commercial speed."

"This is the most important (though insufficient) condition to have international freight use NSR," he said. "Our task is to make the Northern Sea Route a global competitive transport line, and from the 2030s to build up the international freight traffic there."

In November, Rosatom said the main freight growth in 2019 was due to the Yamal LNG project and due to the Arctic Gates oil field.

About the forum

Russia’s state polices in the Arctic to 2020 are regulated by a document, which the then President Dmitry Medvedev inked in 2008. On November 30, 2019, the Ministry for Development of the Far East and Arctic reported it had finalized a draft of the Arctic zone’s development strategy to 2035.

The Arctic: Present and Future forum is underway in St. Petersburg to December 7. The event features about 2,500 delegates from Russia and 20 countries.

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