Between strait and sea: Ottawa's Northwest Passage dilemma with implications for Alaska.

• Author: Gupta, Sourabh
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: World Trade Alaska

All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

During the second half of September last fall, a Danish-owned ice-class bulk carrier, the Nordic Orion, became the first large commercial vessel to traverse the Northwest Passage since the US tanker SS Manhattan in 1969. Embarking from Vancouver in Canada in early September, sailing in waters abutting Alaska and thereafter transiting these Canadian Arctic waters, the Nordic Orion deposited its cargo of 73,500 tons of coking coal at the port of Pori in Finland. For the Danish owner of the vessel, Nordic Bulk Carriers, the voyage proved to be another feather in its cap. In 2010, Nordic Bulk had become the first non-Russian company to sail the Northern Sea Route--spanning the Arctic coast of Russia--when it shipped iron ore from a port in Norway to China.

By traversing the Northwest Passage rather than steam along the traditional Panama Canal route, the Nordic Orion was able to shorten the distance of its voyage by one thousand nautical miles, enabling it to accrue significant fuel savings as well as haul an increased load of cargo. Transportation time was cut by four to five days. It is not without irony that the fuel and time savings--and, thereby, the lower carbon emissions--is the product of global warming which has opened up the viability of this route to commercial traffic in the first place. As such warming continues apace, the Passage--and Alaska's Arctic shoreline--can expect to witness a gradual increase in frequency of such transits. The Northwest Passage has huge security and energy dimensions for Alaska.

Despite the historic nature of the Nordic Orion transit, the Northwest Passage is not expected to challenge the Northern Sea Route as the new gateway for Arctic-based transit anytime soon--if ever. Although the Arctic sea ice has lost half its area and three quarters of its volume over the past three decades, the Northwest Passage still remains a perilous route that is navigable only by a few specialist vessels for approximately two months a year. By contrast, the Northern Sea Route is generally open to traffic from late-July through mid-November and witnessed as many as forty-six vessel passages in 2012, at least fifty-eight in 2013. The Russian infrastructure build-up along the route is also markedly superior. Russia currently has sixteen deep water ports along its Arctic coastline, a host coastline, a host of search-and-rescue stations, and is constructing an airbase on Kotelnyi Island in the Siberian Arctic; by contrast, Canada lacks a single port along...