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Welcome to the new Arctic

This week BarentsObserver brought you three very different news stories from the Arctic. None of them makes world headlines alone. But seen together they provide you with a frightening glimpse of the future Arctic. In this Opinion, BarentsObserver underlines the need for a comprehensive search- and rescue cooperation between the nations in the north.

Location

Like last year we told you about the far below average sea ice extent in the Arctic. And as many earlier have predicted – when the ice decrease in size and thickness, the commercial cargo fleets enters the waters that could shorten their sailing distance from the growing markets in Southern and Eastern Asia to Europe. This week two German vessels were the first to sail commercial cargo through the Northeast Passage.

We wonder if the captain on the bridge ever thought about the fact that it is properly not possible to find any coastal waters worldwide that is further away from any rescue service than his ship was when sailing the northern coast of Siberia.

But, yes – everyone who has sailed in the northern parts of the Barents Sea in September know that nothing is like the Arctic sunset in the horizon seen from the bridge.  

Also, this week we could bring you the news about the faith of a vessel where the crew had all but a beautiful sunset to view in the horizon. The vessel Petrozavodsk ran aground in the middle of a seabird colony at the Bear Island south of Svalbard.  The 54 cubic meters of oil onboard was emptied from the vessel before it made any big trouble for the nesting birds. But that was luck. If the rocks have hit one of the fuel tanks onboard the oil would have been in the water long time before anyone could even think about starting any oil spill prevention mission towards the remote Island.

Now, the challenge is the removal of the vessel itself. Salvage operations in the Arctic are not free of charge. As reported by BarentsObserver, the British company Titan Salvage estimates the cost of moving Petrozavodsk away from the bird cliffs of the Bear Island to be some 15 million USD. This is more than the ship owner according to international maritime law is responsible for paying.

Maybe the next vessel to run onshore in stormy weather will be an oil tanker with enormous consequences for the fragile Arctic environment. Or a cruise vessel with hundreds of tourists trying to get a glimpse of a Polar bear before the ice melts away. We don’t know. What we do know is that there aren’t any emergency oil-spill cleanup systems that work in the ice. Also, we don’t have any helicopter rescue capacity to save hundreds of tourists from a sinking cruise vessel north of Svalbard or in the area around Franz Josef’s land.

For sure, the Petrozavodsk is not the last vessel to run aground in the Arctic. Maybe it is time for IMO to re-write the guidelines and initiate new laws especially designed for the new shipping routes in the Arctic?

Russia and Canada have already established rules for Arctic transport. Norway has rules for sailing in the waters around Svalbard. The challenge is all vessels from other countries, not used to navigate through the ice, through the dark, through the badly mapped waters in the Arctic.

The two main forces behind the increase in shipping in the Arctic are the natural resource development and - as a result of global warming - more shipping through the northern sea route. By avoiding Suez, vessels from Asia to Europe will save 3,000 nautical miles, and by that – huge sums in fuel and time at sea.

The third news BarentsObserver brought you this week was the opening of Barents Rescue 2009 in Murmansk. It includes military and civilian personnel from Russia, Norway, Finland and Sweden. Barents Rescue is organized by the initiative of the Barents Euro Arctic Cooperation, Europe’s northernmost cross-border cooperation.

For us in the editorial staff of BarentsObserver, who are reporting from the events in this northern remote corner of Europe – the top of the world – we can just applause the Barents Rescue cooperation. With the limited resources we have up here we are just doomed to cooperate across borders in all kind of operations related to search and rescue in the Arctic.

Barents Rescue 2009 opened at the central square downtown Murmansk with fireworks, balloons, speeches and folklore. Next time the participants meets, the circumstances could be as far away from balloons and fireworks as possible. Therefore, it is good to know that the different players in the rescue services of the four Barents-countries regularly meet to improve their cross-border knowledge and rescue skills.