“The vessel left the port of Vladivostok on August 23 and passed through Bering Strait around September 6. At the moment, Venta Maersk is sailing down the coast of Norway and it looks like she will arrive in St Petersburg next week,” Maersk spokesperson confirmed to World Maritime News.
“All is well aboard. The vessel is performing well and all systems are working.”
The 3,600 TEU Venta Maersk is the world’s first commercial containership to venture through the route, as the lane was reserved for tankers and most recently passenger ships.
Maersk described its decision to send one of its boxships to transit the route as a trial run aimed at collecting scientific data.
The trial passage will enable us to explore the operational feasibility of container shipping through the Northern Sea Route and to collect data. Currently, we do not see the Northern Sea Route as a commercial alternative to our existing network which is defined by our customers’ demand, trading patterns and population centres,” the company said in a statement in August while announcing the trip.
Maersk has decided to use ultra-low sulphur fuel (ULSFO) for the trail. Venta Maersk forms part of the company’s fleet of Baltic feeder vessels, which have been purpose-built for low-sulphur fuel in order to comply with the Emission Control Area (ECA) requirements for the Baltic and Northern sea regions.
The decision is of particular importance due to environmental concerns raised amid growing shipping activity in the Arctic waters.
Namely, due to higher frequency of vessels there is an ever growing risk of collisions and shipping incidents, including oil spills in an area which is lacking in adequate infrastructure to deal with oil pollution.
The route is becoming ever more appealing to the shipping industry amid the reduction of the ice in the Arctic as it is much shorter than the Suez Canal.
馬士基的冰級船Venta Maersk首次在北海航線上航行。
“該船於8月23日離開port of Vladivostok，於9月6日左右經過Bering Strait。目前Venta Maersk正在沿著挪威海岸航行，看來下週她將抵達聖彼得堡，”馬士基發言人證實世界海事新聞。
“一切都很好。這艘船表現良好，所有系統都在運轉。“
3,600 TEU Venta Maersk是世界上第一個通過該路線進行冒險的商業集裝箱船，因為該航線是為油輪和最近的客船預留的。
馬士基描述了其決定發送其中一艘機票以過境該路線作為旨在收集科學數據的試運行。
試驗通道將使我們能夠探索通過北海航線的集裝箱運輸的運行可行性並收集數據。目前，我們並未將北海航線視為我們現有網絡的商業替代方案，該網絡由客戶的需求，交易模式和人口中心定義，“ 該公司在8月份的一份聲明中宣布此次旅行時說。
馬士基決定使用超低硫燃料（ULSFO）。Venta Maersk是該公司波羅的海進料船隊的一部分，這些船隻專用低硫燃料，以符合波羅的海和北海地區的排放控制區（ECA）要求。
由於北極水域航運活動不斷增加，環境問題日益凸顯，這一決定尤為重要。
也就是說，由於船舶頻率較高，碰撞和航運事故的風險不斷增加，包括缺乏足夠的基礎設施以應對石油污染的地區的石油洩漏。
由於北極地區的冰層減少，這條路線對航運業越來越有吸引力，因為它比蘇伊士運河短得多。
Information source: World Maritime News Staff; Image Courtesy: High North News
