Russia plans to build its first liquefied natural gas-powered icebreakers, a senior official said Friday, reverting to an idea that had been shelved.
Russia has the world’s only fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. It is building this fleet in the hope of expanding the North Sea route over its northern flank into an international shipping route while climate change melts the ice.
“We are now getting back to this topic (building LNG-powered icebreakers). I think that we will decide on the possible construction of two to four medium-sized icebreakers by the end of the year,” Rosatom boss Alexei Likhachev told reporters.
The Russian government has appointed the state nuclear company Rosatom as the state operator of the North Sea route.
In 2018, gas producer Novatek signed an agreement with Rosatom to develop LNG-powered icebreakers. However, these plans were shut down. Novatek has several LNG projects in the Arctic.
LNG-powered icebreakers cost half of the 60 billion rubles ($ 814 million) needed to build nuclear-powered icebreakers.
Likhachev’s deputy, Kirill Komarov, said Rosatom has also ordered two more nuclear-powered icebreakers with the project name 22220.
Arktika, Russia’s newest icebreaker, built last year, was the first in this series of projects. Another four are currently in development.
The Kremlin plans to increase the amount of cargo carried by the NSR from 33 million tons last year to 80 million tons by shipping hydrocarbons and other resources produced in the Arctic.
($ 1 = 73.7251 rubles)
(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Louise Heavens)
Comments are closed.