China’s policies on Polar Silk Road and impacts on trade and energy use in Arctic region

ABSTRACT

China has recently established a new policy for the energy use of the Arctic region. Even though it is not a part of the Arctic Council, China has started a series of partnerships with public and private entities of countries that are geographically and politically members of the Arctic polar Circle. The project has to be carried out within the “Belt and Road Initiative”, by establishing new trade routes between China and the rest of the world. The study aims at assessing the fuel consumption for the Arctic shipping routes and comparing them to the traditional ones, in terms of cost reduction and time efficiency. Moreover, a brief consideration on oil&gas arctic fields has been carried out, in order to understand how the energy policy of China is changing the resource utilization.

KEYWORDS:

• China Arctic policy
• Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
• investment
• oil & gas
• Northern sea route
• international trade

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.