OPEN LETTER

To all agencies, companies, organizations, groups and individuals, who have organized, organize or are planning to organize tours and expeditions to the Geographic North Pole using temporary ice base and runway known worldwide as "Borneo Base".

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The expedition Center of the Association of polar men of Russia "Polus" and Agency "Vicaar Ltd" - two organizations, authorized for building and exploitation of temporary runway on drifting ice near North Pole, that have been in charge for all logistic operations, associated with this project since 2003, after analyzing the statistics of financial results of their activities during last 3 seasons and estimating our perspectives regarding the season of 2007, would like to share our thoughts with you in order to achieve better understanding of the situation we have been faced at the moment.

Building of Borneo Base is multifunctional, complicated technical and logistical process, requiring the coordination of the efforts of several aviation companies and supplying organizations around the country, involving high-level officials from Ministry of Transport of Russia , Ministry of Defense and Federal Security Service of Russia.

Before 2002, the main base on land, from where we have been starting the operations and where we have been collecting all gear and equipment and accommodating all clients before flying up North, was Khatanga - the airport and the small settlement on the North of Siberia. But due to several reasons (mainly - rather long way to Borneo, causing the necessity to make additional refueling for the plane, limited facilities for accommodating the tourists and dependency on sometimes unpredictable behavior of military service for air control in that area) we have been forced to look for another starting point for Borneo expeditions.

Since 2003 we are operating through Longyearbyen ( Spitsbergen ). Choosing of this place as starting point helped us to solve all mentioned problems and allowed to provide higher level of services for all clients.

Logistic operation for building Borneo Base starts in early August by purchasing and delivery by ship 120 tons of helicopter fuel to Sredniy Island for refueling our helicopters on the way up to the Pole and on return and for possible rescue operations. We are chartering the helicopters from aviation company "Taimyr", located in Norilsk . This company is currently the only one reliable aviation company so high in the North, owning more than 15 helicopters MI-8 and its modified and more powerful version MI-8MTV. They have all necessary prearrangements for flying in that area - fuel deposits in certain points on the Arctic coast and experienced professional crews.

We start the working season around March 23-25, when two helicopters depart from Norilsk towards North. After refueling on Sredniy Island , they continue up to approximately 86,5 North, where they are making temporary base on drifting ice. Almost at the same time, we send cargo plane AN-12 from Moscow to Longyearbyen. As soon as the helicopters have reached that place, the plane is taking off from Longyearbyen, having 5 tons of fuel on board in drums on platforms. This fuel is being air-dropped to the temporary base for refueling the helicopters to allow them to continue further north for searching the acceptable place for building the main base Borneo.We are involving leading ice specialists from Arctic Institute in Saint-Petersburg for searching the place for building the runway on drifting ice, because, eventually, finding right place gives us the hope for successful and safe flying operations during the season. Usually the area, where we are searching for the base, is located between 88,5 and 89,5 North and 90 and 140 East and is specified every year based on the analyses of satellite pictures and drift patterns. While the helicopters are searching for the acceptable icy platform to build Borneo (it supposes to be the area with several acceptable places in case of necessity to remove the runway and camp), we are keeping stand by in Murmansk the big cargo plane IL-76 loaded with approximately 27 tons of fuel, tractor and equipment for building the base. As soon as helicopters find the place, they send its coordinates to Murmansk , and cargo plane takes off. In the area, pointed by helicopters, IL-76 is making air-drops of all the equipment, including tractor and skydivers, who would be building the runway.

After first air-drop, we are making second one mostly with only fuel (again up to 20 tons) and camping stuff (tents, heat generators and others). During the operations on Borneo , sometimes we have to deliver additional fuel from Longyearbyen.

The process of building the run-way can take up to one week, depending on many circumstances. We have to prepare the air-strip of not less than 1200 meters in the length and 40 meters width. Providing such characteristics is most of the time nearly beyond the limits, allowed by existing average ice conditions in that area. Even after ensuring these parameters, we are allowed to accept only very limited number of types of the air-crafts. Our multi-year experience proved, that most reliable, efficient and safe among them is AN-74 - the jet plane specially designed for work on icy runways. This is the reason, why we are working constantly with aviation company "GasPromAvia", which owns quite number of such planes.

The third part of logistic chain, while building Borneo Base, is making the air-dropping of all what we need, in very safe and efficient way.

Taking special care about preservation of the environment, we are doing our best to arrange the removal of all waste and garbage from the ice in the end of each season.

More or less the same operation has to be done every year - we are obviously not able to keep the camp and the runway on the drifting ice till next season. Taking such a fact into consideration makes it easier to understand the magic difference in the logistic strategy and costs involved in organization of expeditions and tourist programs in the North Pole area, in comparison with ones in Antarctica , where there are the possibilities to keep permanent base camp.

Having studied-out the multi-year experience of the companies, working in Antarctica, we have been looking not at the way how to get the similar level of charges for similar programs, (even with expectation of increases of our costs, we will be far behind them), but mostly we have analyzed their approach towards terms and conditions of payments, properly and strictly regulated time of making the payments and their policy of cancellation and the rules of sharing the responsibility between the company and its clients.

Now after giving you the imagination about the event, named " Borneo ", we have to consider the following:

1. The costs of the services, provided by our main partners in Russia - a/c "GasPromAvia", a/c "Taimyr", a/c "Cosmos", a/c "Aviast", a/c "Rossia", "Murmansk Shiping company" - were constantly and rapidly growing. The inflation and tremendously growing costs of fuel, especially during last 2 years, were even higher, than objective reasons for that were.
2. Multi-year experience of cooperation with these companies without any visible and serious accidences even in most dangerous and unpredicted area, as high-latitude Arctic is, have proved their professional skills and reliability of their technical facilities, and that fact eventually puts them for us on the exclusive position as the only ones, who are able to provide all required services and safety.
3. After getting the preliminary costs for their services for the upcoming season of 2007, we got the feeling, that these companies have also finally realized their monopoly on such a specific market as Arctic logistics, and we are not able to do something against that due to all reasons, mentioned above, mainly due to safety of all operations, provided by them. We would like to stress, that the safety issues are of top-priority for our project.
4. At the same time, the number of paying people, coming through Borneo, is increasing very slowly and most likely could not exceed 200-250 persons during such a short season, that we have.
5. So, taking all of that into consideration, we are faced the dilemma - either we will announce the costs, which will give us reasonable profitable balance or we would not be not able to make "Borneo Base" in 2007.
6. To make the booking process more organized and adequate for developing the most reliable and efficient flying schedule en route Longyerabyen-Borneo-Longyearbyen, we have agreed that in the season of 2007 Vicaar Agency will be acting as an exclusive seller for all Borneo programs, accepting and collecting orders from all of you. We are going to offer very simple and clear way of transferring the money and will develop the terms and conditions of payments, which are supposed to be more strict time wise.
7. To make the situation more acceptable, we have created several new programs, expanding the possible options to choose. You would be able to get that info on our web-site along with proposed costs not later than in August.

And finally, what we are expecting for the upcoming season is the increase of the costs of Borneo Program. Despite of this we do hope that we would be able to go on with such an exclusive and attractive project as Borneo and North Pole.

Thank you for any attempt of trying to understand and to accept somehow the new conditions, enforced by the circumstances.

Please don't hesitate to ask any questions.

Contact mails: boyarsky@mail.wplus.net , info@norpolex.com

WEB: www.northpolextreme.com

Sincerely yours: Alexander Orlov - "Polus"

Victor Boyarsky - "Vicaar"