Finance & economics | Polar silk road

Warmer Arctic waters could turn the tides in LNG markets

Russia begins to ship gas through the Arctic all the year round

Going with the floes

EXPLORERS TRIED for centuries to find a viable route through the Arctic to link Europe and Asia. ss Vega was the first to transit the north-east passage connecting the two, in 1879, but it was only in 1932 that a ship—the icebreaker A. Sibiryakov—made the trip in one go, without having to stop for the winter. What little commercial shipping there was along the route all but vanished after the fall of the Soviet Union.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The polar silk road”

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