NOVATEK, COSCO SHIPPING, Sovcomflot, and Silk Road Fund signed an agreement to form Maritime Arctic Transport LLC, a joint venture intended to establish a long-term partnership for logistics arrangements for shipping hydrocarbons from the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation to the Asia-Pacific region and along the Northern Sea Route between Asia and Western Europe.
Sovcomflot said its focus would be to manage an icebreaking tanker fleet of Arctic ice-class vessels, interacting with projects including Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2.
Leonid Mikhelson, NOVATEK’s Chairman of the Management Board, said, “The development of MArT will facilitate the rapid transformation of the Northern Sea Route into a global and commercially effective transportation corridor between the Pacific and Atlantic basins, as well as in the implementation of the decision made by the leadership of the Russian Federation to increase Northern Sea Route annual cargo traffic to 80 million tons in 2024”.
