NOVATEK announced problems with navigation on the Northern Sea Route due to sanctions

NOVATEK cannot order commercial filming abroad due to sanctions, and most of the leading suppliers are foreign enterprises. Russia needs its own satellites, since there are few images from open sources,

NOVATEK can no longer order commercial surveys of the Northern Sea Route from satellites due to sanctions, and those available in the public domain are not enough, said Evgeny Ambrosov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of NOVATEK, at the regional field session of the 7th Eastern Economic Forum.

“[Now] only images from open foreign sources are available - there are few such images, while they extremely rarely cover the important and most difficult sections of the Northern Sea Route for us - the East Siberian Sea, the Long Strait, the area north and east of Wrangel Island," - he said.

Almost ₽45 billion needed for satellites to monitor the weather in the Arctic Business

It is impossible to enter into filming deals with foreign commercial enterprises under the conditions of sanctions. The problem arises because the leading suppliers are almost always foreign companies, Ambrosov explained.

In order to complete all shipments on time, contractors will need "a group of Russian commercial earth remote sensing devices operating in the optical, infrared, and radar ranges," said NOVATEK's deputy head. In this case, all units must be able to take pictures of a certain resolution.

The Northern Sea Route runs from the Kara Gate to Cape Dezhnev along the northern coast of Russia through the seas of the Arctic Ocean (Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Bering). It connects European and Far Eastern ports, the mouths of navigable Siberian rivers into a single transport system. In 2021, it transported about 34.9 million tons of cargo with a total value of 1.6 trillion rubles.

Ambrosov said that now Russian enterprises are building three satellites for sensing the Earth and the Northern Sea Route. This measure is necessary to intensify activities on the route, he concluded.

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At the end of 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev to "clean up" the transportation of goods to supply the Far East. This happened after more than 20 civilian ships got stuck in the ice of the Arctic. Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev named “gaps” in the work of Roshydromet, whose “forecast was two weeks late,” as one of the reasons for the incident. He stated that a more reliable forecast could be formed with the help of space technologies.

Back in October 2020, the former head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, spoke at a meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin that in the Arctic it is worth using "all-seeing" radar satellites, weather satellites, GLONASS navigation and stable space communications with the Internet throughout the entire route. Otherwise, Russian ice caravans will remain "deaf-blind" in conditions of extreme cloudiness and polar night, he explained.

In mid-June, the head of the Ministry of Natural Resources Alexander Kozlov sent materials to the government with calculations, according to which 44.2 billion rubles were required to be spent on the construction and launch of seven satellites into space in 2029-2030. Due to this program, the authorities are going to provide year-round navigation along the Northern Sea Route.