TASS, November 16. The cargo turnover along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) over the current year will make about 35 million tonnes, Atomflot’s Deputy Director General Leonid Irlitsa said on Monday.
"The president has ordered to build up the cargo turnover in waters of the Northern Sea Route to 80 million tonnes by 2024. <…> Last year, it was 33 million [tonnes]. This year, we expect it to be over 33 million [tonnes], around 35 million tonnes," he told a conference in Arkhangelsk.
The main cargo shipped along the Northern Sea Route is oil products, he added.
The Northern Sea Route is a shipping route and the main sea line in the Russian Arctic sector. It stretches along northern coasts of Russia across the seas of the Arctic Ocean (Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Bering seas). The route consolidates European and Far Eastern ports of Russia and navigable river mouths in Siberia into a single transport system. The route’s length is 5,600 km from the Kara Strait to the Providence Bay.
Earlier, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister, the president’s envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District, Yuri Trutnev named as a key task the objective to build up the cargo turnover along the Northern Sea Route to 80 million tonnes a year by 2024. The growing costs of shipping goods along the Suez Canal give Russia a big chance to develop its logistics, including the Northern Sea Route.