Massive ice floes that have blocked all attempts to establish Arctic trade routes between East and West are now disappearing so fast the passage is expected to open up within a few years:

Thanks to global warming.

The opening of the North-West passage and its eastern counterpart, the Northern Sea route, which hugs the coast of northern Russia, will certainly have a profound global impact. The giant fisheries of the Aleutian Islands and the high-technology markets of Japan and Korea will become directly accessible to the West for the first time, while the prospects of opening up the giant oil, gas and mineral fields and forests of Arctic Russia could have profound economic and environmental consequences.