MOSCOW, March 29. /TASS/. Oil was the main transit cargo shipped via the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in 2023, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said.

"Transportation of transit cargos via the NSR also hit an all-time high of 2.1 mln tons last year. Oil was the main transit cargo last year. Such results were achieved due to the redirection of cargos from the Baltic ports, from the traditional route through the Suez Canal to the Northern Sea Route," he said.

Last year saw a record high flow of cargos shipped via the Northern Sea Route of over 36 mln tons, which was a five-fold increase above the highest level recorded during the Soviet era, Novak noted. Further prospects for boosting the flow of cargos are linked to the implementation of a number of major projects in the oil and gas sector, the production of non-ferrous metals and infrastructure development, he added.

Earlier, Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev mentioned Gazprom Neft and Lukoil among those companies that have redirected their cargo flows from western routes to the eastern direction.

The Northern Sea Route is a shipping route and the main sea line in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean. It stretches along Russia’s northern coastline across the seas of the Arctic Ocean (Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Bering seas). The route consolidates Russia’s European and Far Eastern ports and Siberia’s navigable rivers into a single transport system. The route’s length is 5,600 km, stretching from the Kara Strait to Providence Bay.