The Oman-flagged Suezmax tanker Lynx, carrying about one million barrels of Russian oil to China, has been stuck for several days on Russia’s Northern Sea Route due to late-season sea ice, GCaptain reports. The 274-meter vessel is not ice-class certified and had to creep slowly along the shoreline in search of a safe passage.
Lynx is part of a growing trend of non ice-class vessels being used to transport Russian crude through the Arctic, stretching navigational rules and increasing risks in hazardous waters. Sanctioned by the US, UK, EU, and others for violating the G7 oil price cap, tanker also operates without a mandatory Arctic shipping permit. Russian authorities did not include it in their daily traffic logs, a tactic increasingly used to conceal sanction-busting shipments.
According to GCaptain, this is the second recent delay for a non ice-class vessel in the East Siberian Sea. Earlier in September, the LNG carrier Arctic Metagaz was stalled near Pevek for over a week. Both ships eventually received assistance from nuclear icebreakers, while another vessel, La Perouse, opted to reroute around Africa instead of taking Arctic risks.
Russia promotes the Northern Sea Route as a faster alternative to the Suez Canal, but the shortage of ice-class vessels is forcing ships without protection to navigate hazardous Arctic conditions.
