Companies Capitalize on Warming Waters

Norilsk Nickel is building its own fleet of ships to capitalize on the melting of the polar ice caps.

The company ordered five reinforced cargo vessels that can plow through the waters north of Siberia as new sea routes open. Moscow-based Norilsk, the world's biggest producer of nickel, is spending at least $467 million to buy reinforced vessels rather than rent both freighters and icebreaker escorts. Global warming, while threatening environmental disasters, is creating economic opportunity for ship owners, makers of ocean cargo vessels and tour operators. New routes may expand access to the world's second-biggest oil supply, deliver U.S. wheat to Asia 30% faster and increase Arctic tourism as much as 50% in a decade. Norway's Aker Yards and South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries Co. are producing ships for such Arctic investors as oil refiner ConocoPhillips and Moscow metal producer OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel. Norilsk is shipping nickel, copper and palladium north of Siberia to Europe from the Taimyr Peninsula in Northern Russia. One reinforced ship is already in service and four are being built by Aker Yards for delivery by mid-2009, all using new hull designs that allow for bow- or stern-first sailing, depending on the thickness of the ocean surface. The next most likely route to open is a straight line across the magnetic North Pole, bulldozed by a new generation of ships. That course would save 4,000 miles and 11 days compared with an 11,000-mile, one-month trip between Hamburg and Yokohama, Japan, via the Suez Canal.

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