MSC reaffirms northern sea route rejection as Russia ramps up Arctic rhetoric

Leading boxship owner-operator Mediterranean Shipping Co has doubled down on its stance against the use of the northern sea route following pronouncements by Russia, which has been promoting the opening up of the Arctic as a viable alternative route for ships seeking to avoid bottlenecks at the Suez Canal.

“The NSR is neither a quick fix for the current market challenges, nor a viable long-term strategy,” said MSC chief executive Soren Toft, reiterating MSC’s “Arctic commitment” first spelt out in 2019.

“MSC will not seek to cut through the melting ice of the Arctic to find a new route for commercial shipping and I consider this a position the whole shipping industry must adopt.

“Some of our peers have already made the same commitment to put the preservation of the Arctic environment ahead of profits,” Mr Toft said.

These remarks built upon MSC’s expressed concerns over potential environmental damage from the year-long use of NSR, an Arctic trade route that the Russians have positioned as a short-cut for trades between North America or Europe and eastern Russia or Asia.

The NSR shipped just 33m tonnes of cargo in the past year, but Russia has invested heavily to develop the route, which allows ships to cut the journey to Asian ports by 15 days when compared with using the Suez Canal.

Critics claim that an expansion of Arctic shipping could increase the emissions of so-called black carbon — physical particles of unburned carbon that can settle on land or ice, as well as compromising air quality and accelerating the shrinkage of Arctic sea ice.

Risks such as navigation incidents, fuel spills, air quality and altering the ecological balance or biodiversity of the marine habitat beneath the surface of the sea, according to a statement from MSC.

Executive vice-president Bud Darr claimed the attempt to open new navigation routes that skim the polar ice cap were an “ignorant ambition of an 18th-century explorer”, and “pose risks to humans and many other species in the region” and “worsen the impact of shipping upon climate change”.

Last week, the Russian energy ministry highlighted the “safety and sustainability of the NSR” after a containership, Ever Given, became stranded along Egypt’s Suez Canal, stalling the passage of hundreds of ships servicing world trade.

The NSR and Russian energy pipelines are highly secure, cost competitive and reliable compared with alternative means to transport cargoes, the ministry said.