The Risks & Rewards of Arctic Cable Projects: Part II
Nordunet's cost estimates are way off base. It is not a 200 million Euro project, but a half billion Euro project. It would require a special cable ship designed for Arctic climates together with two icebreakers to be on the safe side. The proposed paths are as long as many non-Arctic cables whose construction costs were in the $200 million to $300 million range. But those projects did not require specially designed cable ships nor icebreakers for deployment or for the necessary geophysical survey undertaken before construction. The cable would probably be double armoured and the design phase costs alone probably twice the norm. So it is a given that upfront costs will be extraordinarily high. And here is the dagger in the heart: ice scouring. Floating glaciers scrape the bottom of the sea floor in the Arctic coastal areas. One or two meter burial won't be enough for the Northwest passage route raising the cost. But going deeper for burial may require special equipment or not...