Taimyr coal lacks bulk carriers

The AEON Corporation has not yet signed contracts for the construction of any of the 16 ice-class bulk carriers that are needed to remove coal from the Syradasay deposit in Taimyr, although the first two vessels should be built by the end of 2025. The operator of the field development project, Severnaya Zvezda, came under US sanctions in May, which makes it difficult to order bulk carriers from foreign shipyards. According to analysts, Russia now also has no free capacity for ship construction, and AEON will have to attract foreign bulk carriers from the market, and from March 2026 this will require special government permission.

The AEON corporation of Roman Trotsenko encountered problems when exporting coal from the Syradasay coal deposit in Taimyr, which could lead to a decrease in cargo traffic on the Northern Sea Route by 24 million tons from 2030 to 2035. This is stated in materials prepared by the Ministry of Eastern Development as part of an assessment of the impact of sanctions on key projects in the Arctic. It is noted that AEON announced the need for 16 Arcticmax bulk carriers with a deadweight of about 90 thousand tons for coal export. According to the schedule, the company needs to receive two such vessels at the end of 2025, four more in 2026 and 2027, and the rest in 2029-2030. However, at the moment the corporation has not signed contracts for the construction of a single bulk carrier.

The resources of the Syradasay deposit are estimated at 5 billion tons. The project includes the creation of a coal mine with a capacity of 5 million tons per year in the first stage and 10 million tons per year in the second, the construction of a processing plant and the creation of the necessary infrastructure. The volume of investment in the project is more than 45 billion rubles. until 2025.

In May, the United States imposed sanctions against Arctic Energy, a member of the AEON, which is the parent company of Severnaya Zvezda, the operator of the development of the Syradasai field. The materials of the Ministry of Eastern Development note that the company is now experiencing a shortage of bulk carriers due to sanctions. The vessels themselves, due to too much draft, cannot approach the terminals; an auxiliary fleet is used for transshipment, which doubles the time of loading operations. The problem is planned to be solved through dredging.

In 2021, Kommersant reported that 30 ships would be needed by 2032 to export coal from the Taimyr project along the Northern Sea Route. Initially, AEON planned not to build, but to charter bulk carriers from the market, but under the conditions of sanctions this strategy will be difficult to implement. At the same time, it will also be difficult for the company to place an order at foreign shipyards due to sanctions, and, according to the Ministry of Eastern Development, AEON has not yet applied to Russian shipyards. The corporation did not provide a comment.

Another problem is that from March 2026, according to government decree No. 1964 of November 2, 2022, it will no longer be possible to transport coal in the Russian Arctic on foreign-made ships. Back in the spring, the Ministry of Industry and Trade notified the Russian Chamber of Shipping that coal could be transported on Russian-built ships if contracts for their construction were concluded before March 1, 2026. Otherwise, AEON will have to obtain special government permission to use foreign vessels.

The head of Infoline-Analytics, Mikhail Burmistrov, believes that the government will give such permission. As for the construction of ships in Russia, the expert says that the shortage of capacity at shipbuilding enterprises has worsened significantly in the last two years, including due to problems with component equipment as a result of sanctions and an acute personnel shortage caused, among other things, by mobilization. “As a result, all this will not allow us to build a number of ships on time,” states Mikhail Burmistrov. In his opinion, cargo owners will be forced to temporarily charter foreign ships and then replace them with Russian ones.

Evgeniy Zainullin