China COSCO Has No Intention of Routing Ships Through Arctic Despite Government Encouragement

China COSCO Shipping says routing its ships through the Arctic would present too much risk to their ships and customers' cargo.

Despite recent encouragement from China for its country's vessels to start routing via the Arctic's Northwest Passage, avoiding more traditional waterways such as the Panama Canal in the process, representatives of China COSCO Shipping (China Cosco) say they have no current or near-future plans to do so.

The comments were released by Panama media this week, saying they were made during an April 21 meeting with Jorge Quijano, CEO of the Panama Canal Authority (ACP).

As Ship & Bunker reported last month, China 's encouragement was backed by its Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) who released a 365 page navigation guide to facilitate uptake of the route.

Despite this, China Cosco says it has no intention of routing its ships through the Arctic because it would present too much risk to their ships and customers' cargo.

"We do not see it as a threat in the short or medium term, but we are always researching and our meteorological personnel participate in all conferences on the Arctic and, so far, there is no evolutionary change," said Quijano of the Arctic route.

"Even with melting ice for much of the year it lowers reliability on that route, and we would only compete with China to the north east coast of the U.S., not in the Gulf of Mexico which is still shorter by the Panama Canal route to Miami, Houston, and New Orleans."

Cosco's comments will presumably be welcome news not only to those in Panama but, ironically, some in China also, with the country's encouragement for shipping companies to use the Arctic route seemingly at odds with the Chinese-funded Nicaragua Grand Canal - a planned alternative to the Panama Canal that would link the Atlantic and Pacific.

In March, Ship & Bunker reported that Hong-Kong based HKND Group had indicated that work is set to begin as early as this August on the new Nicaraguan waterway.