China Gains Long-Coveted Role in Arctic --- Russia seeks Beijing's help as it ships more oil east through polar routes.

"HONG KONG -- China's goal of becoming a major player in the Arctic has long been frustrated by its neighbor Russia, which has closely protected its dominant role in the region.

Now, along with the ice that encases the earth's northern pole, Moscow's resistance is beginning to thaw.

Faced with economic isolation from the West over events in Ukraine, Russia is turning to China for help developing the Arctic as Western energy companies are trying to pull out of Russian projects. The newfound cooperation is most evident in surging shipments of crude through the Northern Sea Route, which traverses the Arctic from northwestern Russia to the Bering Strait.

The volume, while still small compared with what is carried via southern routes, has shot up in recent weeks. Russia asserts the right to regulate transit on the route. It says the demand has driven it to permit larger tankers without so-called ice classification -- stronger hulls and other reinforcements to sail the ice-filled waters -- raising fears of spills in the remote region. The first of two larger tankers arrived at a Chinese port in recent days, each carrying more than one million barrels of oil.

Russia has joined with China in naval exercises and maritime security arrangements in the far north, and looked to it for aid in technology such as satellite data to monitor ice conditions.

When it comes to the Arctic, China "doesn't have to care so much about official Russian policy anymore," said Marcus M. Keupp, an economics lecturer at the military academy of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich who studies the region.

For China, which declared itself a "near Arctic" nation in 2018 despite being more than 900 miles from the Arctic Circle, Russia's new welcome provides a long-sought opportunity. Beijing has wanted to expand its role in the Arctic to increase access to shipping routes, natural resources, climate and other scientific research opportunities, and expand its military and strategic clout.

It has proposed a "Polar Silk Road" as a component of Chinese leader Xi Jinping's broader Belt and Road infrastructure initiative that would make use of the shorter distance to ship goods via the Arctic, avoiding chokepoints at the Suez Canal and Malacca Strait.

Except for Russia, Arctic nations are all Western democracies that have grown increasingly cautious toward Chinese investment. Security concerns led Denmark to thwart a Chinese plan to build three airports in Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory. Canada blocked a Chinese company from buying a gold mine in its Arctic region in 2020 after military officials raised security concerns.

Russia hasn't always welcomed China to the region. At one point, it opposed China's application to become an observer on the Arctic Council, the body of eight Arctic nations that is the leading forum for addressing regional issues, and previously blocked Chinese ships from conducting Arctic research.

Events in Ukraine have changed Moscow's approach. Western sanctions have forced Russia to lean more heavily on China to prop up its economy, support its conflict effort and maintain its longstanding goals of developing the Arctic.

"Russia certainly has the manpower, and it certainly has regional knowledge, but it no longer has capital or technology," said Keupp of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who edited a 2015 book on the route. "It's to China's big advantage because it can now really exert influence and economic pressure on Russia and develop this route according to its own needs."

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country "always adheres to the basic principles of respect, cooperation, mutual benefit and sustainability in its participation in Arctic affairs."

The Russian Foreign Ministry didn't respond to a request for comment.

As Western companies are trying to pull out of their projects in Russia, Moscow has sought help from Chinese companies to develop ports, mines and other infrastructure in the Russian Arctic. Russia changed its Arctic policy document in February. Russia's policy, which previously focused on "strengthening good-neighbor relations with Arctic states," now emphasizes access to all foreign states -- a move that further opens the door to China.

France's TotalEnergies said last year it was scaling back its operations in Russia, in part because of the Ukraine. BP and Exxon Mobil have also pulled out of projects with Rosneft Oil, the state-controlled Russian energy giant with extensive projects in the Arctic.

Sanctions related to Ukraine have made Chinese firms cautious about expanding business in Russia, even as trade between the two countries has soared, analysts say. Still, that hasn't stopped them exploring potential partnerships in the Arctic.

Anatoly Tkachuk, a former KGB officer turned businessman, said he met in January with representatives of two Chinese state-controlled infrastructure giants, China Communications Construction and China Railway Construction, to discuss plans to mine titanium and other raw materials from a large deposit in the Komi Republic near the Arctic Circle.

The project would include a railroad to ship the materials to the coast and a deep-water port to load ships for transportation along the Northern Sea Route.

In the Nenets region, which sits mostly above the Arctic Circle along the Barents Sea, the regional government said in August that the China Energy Engineering Corp. agreed to open a branch in the region as it explores development of natural-gas deposits there.

If those projects go ahead, the Chinese companies would join state-owned oil giant China National Petroleum Corp. in the region. CNPC joined with Russian natural-gas producer PAO Novatek, TotalEnergies and China's Silk Road Fund to develop the Yamal LNG project, which began production in 2017, and is a partner in the development of the Arctic 2 LNG project along with TotalEnergies, state-run China National Offshore Oil and a Japanese consortium.

One area that is already seeing increased activity is energy shipments. Shortly before the U.S. and its allies imposed a $60-a-barrel price cap on Russian crude last December, the 843-foot Vasily Dinkov, a Russian oil tanker, sailed east through the Arctic to a Chinese oil terminal on the Shandong peninsula." [1]

Inexpensive transport through Northern passage will unite Europe and Asia into one Euroasian economic area. We, Western countries, because of our adventure in Ukraine are excluded out of this transformation. (Maidan anyone? Just give us one billion dollars every five minutes, and you will have perfect Maidan with tons of salo consumed (Ukrainian salted pork fat taken in with a lot of vodka.))

 

Salo Ukraine...  

1. World News: China Gains Long-Coveted Role in Arctic --- Russia seeks Beijing's help as it ships more oil east through polar routes. Austin Ramzy.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 03 Oct 2023: A.16.