The accessibility and cooperative competitiveness of the representative ports along the Northern Sea Route

As the most promising Arctic passage, the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is an important part of China’s Ice Silk Road. Previous studies have reported on Arctic navigability at the macroscopic scale. However, in reality, maritime trade occurs from port to port and is strongly associated with port cooperative competitiveness. In this study, we investigated the accessibility of representative ports (e.g. Murmansk, Sabetta, Tiksi and Pevek) along the NSR and evaluated their cooperative competitiveness on the basis of infrastructure, hinterland resources, etc. The port at Murmansk is ice-free, with rich oil and gas resources, similar with Sabetta, while the ports at Tiksi and Pevek experience severe sea ice, with sea ice concentration generally exceeding 50% from November to June. The navigable days increased at the four ports from 2020–2029; for example, those generally ranged from 50 to 100 for Open-Water (OW) vessels at Murmansk and Pevek during the early 2020s. Polar Class 6 (PC6) ships showed better economic and environmental benefits than OW vessels, with lower navigation costs and carbon emissions. Shipping routes to eastern ports shifted northward before moving southward, whereas the routes to Murmansk consistently expanded northward. Besides, an analysis of navigation cost from Shanghai to the four ports revealed that PC6 ships provided nonlinear distance-dependent savings, and a multifactor evaluation ranked port competitiveness as Tiksi > Murmansk > Sabetta > Pevek. These results can serve as references for shipping along the NSR and for maritime trade with Russia.