Northern Sea Route Hits 104 Transits by September, Beating 2025 Total

By Tom Whitfield

Russia's Northern Sea Route logged 104 confirmed transits by September 30 — already past the 103 recorded in all of 2025 and the 97 of 2024. The figures come from Norway's Centre for High North Logistics (CHNL), and they point to a season that could approach 150 voyages before the ice closes in.

The cargo numbers tell the same story. Estimated transit cargo hit 3.7m tonnes by the end of September, up 15% on the whole of last year. Combined deadweight of vessels using the route climbed 26% to 7.8m dwt. And CHNL counted another 45 potential transits underway or inside the route at the month's end, which would push the season past 4.5m tonnes if they complete.

That's not incremental growth. That's a step change.

What's actually moving?

Tankers dominate. CHNL recorded 22 eastbound tanker voyages carrying roughly 2.1m tonnes by September 30, predominantly Russian crude bound for Asia. Bulk carriers added another 1.1m tonnes of eastbound cargo. Westbound traffic is largely repositioning — ships moving from Asia toward European Russia rather than carrying revenue freight.

Russian energy exports supply most of the momentum. Oil shipments through the NSR have climbed nearly 50% this year, with roughly 20m barrels delivered to Asia between July and mid-October. LNG is a smaller but growing slice: four eastbound cargoes totalling about 300,000 tonnes so far, per CHNL.

The more interesting signal for cargo interests outside the energy trade is the Asia-Europe segment. Four direct Asia-Europe voyages had been completed by September 30, against just one in the whole of 2025. Still a rounding error against Suez routings, but a fourfold jump in a single season shows the corridor is no longer purely a Russian cabotage and crude lane.

Why now?

The mechanism is straightforward. Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal and the Black Sea has pushed carriers and cargo owners to price alternatives they'd previously ignored. The Arctic passage is expensive and potentially hazardous. It also cuts distance between Asia and northern Europe sharply, and in a market where rerouting risk has become routine, that trade-off now works for a wider set of operators.

What does this change for shippers and carriers?

For Russian exporters, mostly nothing — they were already there, and sanctions pressure makes the NSR a natural outlet for crude heading east. For international operators, the route is edging from experimental to credible, at least in summer months. The capacity share remains tiny, so shippers shouldn't expect NSR rates or schedules to move global indices. What it does change is optionality: when Hormuz or Suez wobbles, there is now a demonstrated, if narrow, fourth corridor with a growing traffic base.

The environmental ledger is the other half of the story, and it's getting worse in step with the traffic.

Dr Sian Prior, lead advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, warned earlier this year that growing commercial shipping activity would bring "increased climate impacts, increased pollution and increased loss of biodiversity."

The NGO's sharpest concern is black carbon — soot from ships burning fossil fuels. When those particles settle on snow and ice, they cut the surface's reflectivity and speed up melting. More transits mean more soot, in the one ocean basin where deposition damage is most direct.

Then there's spill risk. More tanker voyages through remote Arctic waters, where harsh conditions and thin emergency response infrastructure make pollution hard to contain, raises the downside of any single incident. A 2.1m-tonne tanker season concentrates a lot of that risk in a waterway with few rescue and cleanup assets.

Where the season lands

CHNL's own numbers frame the forward view. If the 45 pending transits complete, the 2026 season finishes near 150 voyages and 4.5m tonnes — a third higher than the current confirmed tonnage. With Hormuz and Suez risk unresolved and Russian crude and LNG output still seeking eastern buyers, the trajectory points to another record next season, and a policy fight over black carbon rules that traffic growth will only sharpen.