The Northern Sea Route is becoming an oil corridor to China

by Heiner Kubny
11/01/2026
The Russian shuttle oil tanker Mikhail Ulyanov is navigating through thick sea ice in the Arctic. The tanker, which is around 257 metres long, was specially built for year-round oil transport from the Prirazlomnoye field in the Pechora Sea and can cope with ice conditions, in some cases without the assistance of an icebreaker. (Photo: Sovcomflot/SCF)

Russia is transporting significantly more crude oil to China via the Northern Sea Route this summer. In the first eight months of 2026 alone, more than ten million barrels were shipped through the Arctic. The increase in tanker traffic has continued into September.

According to data from the shipping service LSEG, by early September twelve tankers had delivered more than ten million barrels of Russian crude oil to China via the Northern Sea Route. By way of comparison, the total for the entire 2025 navigation season was around 13 million barrels. China has so far been the sole destination for this year’s Arctic crude oil deliveries.

The Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker Taymyr escorts the ice-strengthened tanker Indiga through the dense ice near the Siberian port of Dudinka. Icebreakers and tankers enable year-round transport of raw materials along Russia’s Arctic sea routes. (Photo: Timur V. Voronkov / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Traffic increased significantly, particularly in July and August. Lloyd’s List reports that this trend continued into September. Several of the tankers deployed are subject to Western sanctions. Furthermore, interruptions to AIS position signals were detected on some vessels, along with indications of ship-to-ship transhipments off the Russian Pacific coast and in Chinese waters.

This year’s season also highlights the difficulties of the route. In early August, a large convoy of ships veered unusually far north due to difficult ice conditions in the Vilkitsky Strait and passed Severnaya Zemlya on a route extending to approximately 81.5° north. Among the vessels involved were also tankers with a comparatively low ice class.

A Sentinel-1 radar image shows the track of an LNG tanker through the Arctic sea ice on 13 January 2021. The Christophe de Margerie and the Nikolay Zubov were crossing the Northern Sea Route at that time without icebreaker escort. (Satellite image: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2021)

The route has taken on added significance with the start of oil exports from the vast Vostok Oil project on the Taimyr Peninsula. In early September, crude oil was loaded onto the Arc7 tanker Valentin Pikul for the first time at the new Bukhta Sever terminal in the Kara Sea. The project is designed to export large volumes of oil via the Northern Sea Route in future.

As a result, the Northern Sea Route is increasingly becoming a direct energy corridor between the Russian Arctic and China. At the same time, ice conditions, a lack of infrastructure and the great distance from rescue and emergency services remain significant risks for the growing tanker traffic.

Heiner Kubny, PolarJournal