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www.marinelink.com 33 for resources and this in turn will lead to geo political confl ict. There is no indica- tion that is the case.”

Risk & Reward

Ship owners today are pressed to run cleaner, more effi cient ships, and the pri- mary reward in transiting cargo through the Arctic is the saving of time and mon- ey. “This (cost savings) is an extremely dynamic issue, but the main point is the time savings which equates to saving in bunker fuels and charter hire,” said Felix

H. Tschudi, Chairman and fourth gen- eration owner of the Tschudi Group and

Chairman of the Center for High North

Logistics.

Though the savings in time, fuel and emissions are substantial, there are ad- ditional fees to pay, specifi cally the cost for Atomfl ot, the Russian icebreaking and escort authority, for icebreaking and safety escort through Russian waters – which is acknowledged as the best and safest route. “At the end of the day, it really comes down to dollars per ton de- livered, the relative savings of using the

NSR depend on the overall health of the freight market,” said Tschudi.

With reward comes risk, and risk miti- gation and management considerations are central to any maritime operation, particularly operations surrounding the business of energy production and trans- portation. First and foremost, operators mulling an Arctic route must consider the ice, as the ice in and of itself is a risk for the hull and the machinery. And while everyone talks about the polar melt and the ice cover vanishing, the area open for shipping is short already. The ice cover has been reduced radically, but this could simply be a cycle, and it could turn again. Outside of the ice, the risk list for Arctic operations is long.

Lori Davey is a lifelong Alaskan and resident of Anchorage, currently the

General Manager, Fairweather, LLC.

A member of the Edison Chouest Off- shore companies, Fairweather, LLC was founded in 1976 by Sherron Perry with a focus on providing aviation weather observation services to remote regions of Alaska. In response to the growth of the emerging oil and gas industry, Fair- weather expanded its operations to in-

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