Government to Design a Railway Line for Indiga Port

Photo: Shtrik Vadim/GeoPhoto.ru

Government to Design a Railway Line for Indiga Port

The project to create a transport cluster linked to the planned Indiga Port on the Barents Sea coast in the Arctic took another important step forward. President Putin instructed the Federal Government to come up with suggestions as regards constructing a railway line for this port by 10 May 2022.

A new line will connect Indiga, an ice-free deep water sea port scheduled for completion for as early as 2025, with the national railway network, thus adding another gateway to the Northern Sea Route. The new line will be used to carry freight coming from Russia’s continental industrial areas such as Novosibirsk and the Kuznetsk coal-mining region, as well as transit cargo from the neighboring nation of Kazakhstan. The port is expected to handle some 80 million metric tonnes of freight per year, including coal, wood, paper and other goods such as methanol to be produced in the Indiga area, ores from the Pizhma titanium deposit etc.

The project is believed to considerably improve Russia’s standing in the global transport market. First and foremost, it will help to not only increase this country’s freight railroads capacity, but also address shipping bottlenecks on the overloaded Trans-Siberian Railway. Apart from this, with a new port and its railroad becoming operational, the amount of freight carried through the Northern Sea Route will inevitably grow at a considerable rate thus solidifying its status as an international shipping line.

Arctic Today is a column by PORA CEO Alexander Stotskiy analyzing major international, national and regional events and trends in the Arctic.
Alexander Stotskiy
18 January 2022
Arctic Today