Russian Oil Companies Should Use Siberian Rivers to Export Their Production, Verkhoturov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 11 – Rather than waiting for the construction of pipelines or railways, Russian oil companies should ship their production via Siberian rivers to the Arctic where the oil can be transferred to ships and sent either eastward to the Pacific rim countries or westward toward Europe, Dmitry Verkhoturov says.

            These rivers are deep enough and wide enough for ships to carry oil at less cost per ton per kilometer than even pipelines, the Siberian economic reporter says; but up to now, Russian oil company executives have not exploited this route, although they will likely have to if oil increasingly is found far from existing pipeline routes (sibmix.com/?doc=19182).

            In addition to the lack of interest among oil company executives, Verkhoturov’s proposal faces two other major challenges: the fear of Russia’s growing environmental movement that such transit will lead to accidents and the contamination of these rivers and the problems Moscow is having with keeping ports where these rivers empty into the Arctic ice free.

            There has been a great deal of attention to the potential environmental impact of such use of Siberia’s rivers (https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russians-want-to-develop-arctic-but.html). There has been much less to the problems of ice in ports where the rivers reach the Arctic.

            But that is now becoming a major issue. Even as Moscow officials are celebrating that for the first time ever, Russia has eight nuclear icebreakers on the Northern Sea Route (arctic.ru/infrastructure/20251211/1065451.html), smaller Russian icebreakers aren’t available to keep key ports there ice free and open for navigation.

            The Barents Observer reports that a Russian tanker had to give up on making a planned stop at the port where the Ob flows into the Arctic because no Russian icebreaker was available to open a channel (thebarentsobserver.com/news/shadow-tanker-blocked-by-arctic-sea-icenbsp/442007).

            The lack of a sufficient number of icebreakers capable of keeping ports open is not only yet another reason why Verkhoturov’s proposal is unlikely to go anywhere but also why nuclear icebreakers alone are unlike to be sufficient to solve the NSR’s ice problems however impressive they appear and however often Moscow officials point to them as a kind of salvation.