Murmansk Shipping Company (), often abbreviated as MSCO, was a Russian shipping company based in

Murmansk Murmansk () is a port city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast in the far Far North (Russia), northwest part of Russia. It is the world's largest city north of the Arctic Circle and sits on both slopes and banks of a modest fjord, Ko ...

. It was one of the primary shipping companies operating in Arctic Russia and northern Europe, in 2014 the company had 303 vessels, with a total dead weight of about 1.2 million tons. The company ran a notable museum in Murmansk.

History

The company was established in 1939 as the Murmansk State Dry-Cargo and Passenger Shipping Company, and was renamed in 1967. It specialised in arctic transportation, and by 1940 it had 37 vessels with a total deadweight of 112,200 tons. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

its carriers served as allied escorts. It performed passenger as well as cargo navigation. In 1973, the

Northern Fleet The Northern Fleet (, ''Severnyy flot'') is the Naval fleet, fleet of the Russian Navy in the Arctic. According to the Russian ministry of defence: "The Northern Fleet dates its history back to a squadron created in 1733 to protect the terri ...

and the Murmansk Shipping Company commenced transporting spent nuclear fuel by barges to Murmansk, and then delivering it to

Mayak The Mayak Production Association (, , from 'lighthouse') is one of the largest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation, housing Production reactor, production reactors (''non'' electricity) and a reprocessing plant. The closest settlement ...

by train. In 1977, one of its ships, the nuclear-powered icebreaker '' Arktika'', was the first ever to reach the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

The company was reorganized into the Joint Stock Company in 1993. At this time the company faced significant criticism from environmentalists which culminated from the Yablokov Report, drawn up by presidential adviser Aleksey Yablokov, which revealed that the Northern Fleet and the Murmansk Shipping Company had dumped some 2.5 million curies of liquid and solid radioactive waste in the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...

between 1959 and 1991. In 1996 the Murmansk Shipping Company reported 3,100 fuel assemblies were stored on the service ship ''Lotta''. In February 1998 the board was rumoured to consider discontinuance of its atomic fleet. At the time it operated eight civilian nuclear-powered vessels which were owned by the federal government. In June 2017 the company made the first additions to its fleet in a decade. In November 2018 the company signed a significant new contract to ship coal produced in the Russian arctic by VostokCoal along the

Northern Sea Route The Northern Sea Route (NSR) (, shortened to Севморпуть, ''Sevmorput'') is a shipping route about long. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is the shortest shipping route between the western part of Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region. Ad ...

to Europe. The coal was to be mined in the

Taymyr Peninsula The Taymyr Peninsula ( ) is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of the mainland of Eurasia. Administratively it is part of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Federal subject of Russia. Ge ...

near to

Norilsk Norilsk ( rus, Нори́льск, p=nɐˈrʲilʲsk) is a closed city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located south of the western Taymyr Peninsula, around 90 km east of the Yenisei, Yenisey River and 1,500 km north of Krasnoyarsk. Norilsk is 300 ...

and shipped via the northern-most port in Russia, the Port of Dikson, which is located on the

Kara Sea The Kara Sea is a marginal sea, separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Ultimately the Kara, Barents and Laptev Seas are all ...

. In July 2019 the company lost the

Kola Peninsula The Kola Peninsula (; ) is a peninsula in the extreme northwest of Russia, and one of the largest peninsulas of Europe. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely inside the Arctic Circle and is border ...

concession, which it had been servicing for 42 years with the ''Klavdiya Elanskaya''. In October 2020 the company declared bankruptcy.

Facilities

The main operating facility of the company was at Atomflot, to the north of the city on the Murmansk Fjord. The base contained liquid and solid waste processing systems, warehouses for shipping supplies and workshops etc. The ships were maintained at the dry docks in Murmansk, and the Zvezdochka shipyard in

Severodvinsk Severodvinsk (; ) is a city in the north of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located in the delta of the Northern Dvina, west of Arkhangelsk, the administrative center of the oblast. As of the 2021 Census, the population was 157,213. Due to the p ...

also made repairs to the reactors of the

nuclear-powered icebreaker A nuclear-powered icebreaker is an icebreaker with an Nuclear marine propulsion, onboard nuclear power plant that produces power for the vessel's propulsion system. Although more expensive to operate, nuclear-powered icebreakers provide a number ...

Museum

The Murmansk Shipping Company Museum was on Volodarskogo Street in Murmansk, established in 1977, and had an extensive collection of artifacts related to its history and Russian naval history. Among its displays were photographs of polar captains, ship bells, micro model replicas, marine equipment, with one section dedicated entirely to icebreakers and their history. Icebreakers represented by particularly fine models include ''Yermak'' (1898), ''Fyodor Litke'' (1909), ''Sedov'' (1909), ''Alexander Sibiryakov'' (1909), ''Sadko'' (1913), ''Semyon Dezhnov'' (1939), ''Severny Veter'' (1944), ''Lenin'' (1959), ''Kiev'' (1965), ''Artika'' (1972), ''Krasin'' (1976), ''Kapitan Dranitsyn'' (1980), ''Vladmimir Ignatyuk'' (1983), ''Rossiya'' (1985) and ''Taymyr'' (1989).

Past and present vessels

As of 2014 the company had 303 vessels, with a total deadweight of about 1.2 million tons. A selected number of ships are shown below: * ''Indiga'' and ''Varzuga'', Finnish icebreaking product tankers purchased in 2003 *A number of SA-15 type Arctic multipurpose cargo ships (''Kapitan Danilkin'' and ''Yuriy Arshenevskiy'') *'' Sevmorput'', the last nuclear-powered cargo ship previously operated by Murmansk Shipping Company * ''Vladimir Ignatyuk'', an icebreaker purchased from Canada * ''Kotlas'', a 1989-built tanker * ''Kuzma Minin'', a 1980-built bulk carrier * ''Volodarsky'', the oldest vessel of the fleet (launched in 1929) used to transport and store radioactive waste

References

External links

Official Murmansk Shipping Company website
�� {{Operation Anadyr Shipping companies of Russia Russian brands Shipping companies of the Soviet Union Transport companies established in 1939 1939 establishments in the Soviet Union 1939 establishments in Russia 2020 disestablishments in Russia Companies based in Murmansk Oblast