• Russia is sending an ice-breaking tanker of oil to China via the Arctic Circle, Bloomberg data shows.
• It's the 2nd time a cargo of Russia crude has taken the shortest passage between Europe and east Asia.
• It could open up a quicker route to Asia, with an EU ban on seaborne Russian oil due next month. 

Russia is sending an ice-breaking tanker of oil to China via the Arctic Circle, only the second time it has explored a route that promises to get crude to Asian buyers more rapidly. 

The ship, the Vasily Dinkov, took on a small cargo of oil from a storage vessel in Murmansk in late October, according to Bloomberg data. It's now making the arduous 3,300-mile journey through typically iceberg-laden seas to the Chinese port of Rizhao, where it's scheduled to dock Thursday next week.

The voyage is the shortest ocean route between Europe and east Asia, taking half the time to reach China from Russia's Baltic ports than the standard passage through the Suez Canal.

That route could turn out to be vital come the warmer summer weather, Viktor Katona, a lead analyst at research firm Kpler, told Bloomberg. 

"Europe is already sealed off," he said, referring to importers on the continent shunning Russia's energy supplies due to the Ukraine war. 

"If they're not buying, why circumnavigate the entire universe if you can use the Northern Sea Route to get to China in 20 days?" he said.

The European Union plans to bring in a ban on seaborne imports of Russian crude on December 5, meaning the EU market will effectively vanish for Moscow. Its crude oil shipments to the region have already plunged 60% since its February invasion of Ukraine.

The measure will bar EU tankers from transporting Russian oil — meaning deliveries to alternative buyers in India, for example, will take 10 times as long.

Like India, China has been snapping up Russian crude sold at a discount as Moscow seeks alternative buyers to its European market. Seaborne shipments of the oil hit a five-month high last week as vessels scrambled to leave port in time to make their deliveries before the EU embargo takes force.