The port is the eastern base of the northern sea route's Marine Operations Headquarters, run by the Far East Shipping Company (FESCO) from an icebreaker in the harbor, though the port is still owned by the Russian Ministry of Transport. The ports authority stretches as far as 125° east, just west of the Lena River. Past this point, the western Marine Operations Headquarters, in Dikson, has control. The headquarters govern all routes that ships take when using the northern sea route, organizing convoys and providing up-to-date information on ice conditions throughout their sphere of influence. Apart from FESCO, the port is also used by the Arctic Shipping Company, based in Tiksi, who take coal from Zheleny Mys to Pevek. Despite its prominence as the eastern Marine Operations Headquarters, the level of cargo the port has had to deal with in recent years has been declining rapidly. Although there is still gold mining around Bilibino and Leningradsky, there is little in the way of cargo generation as a result of that industry. The port is not a significant exporter of goods at all and is mainly responsible for dealing with the import of fuel (coal from Beringovsky and oil from Europe and the United States) for the region, though in the second half of the 1990s even this activity rarely exceeded a few thousand tons, and in 1997, Mys Shmidta, traditionally the second most important of the northern Chukotkan ports, was handling nearly four times as much cargo. The future does not look promising either, and although mining for other materials such as tin still occurs in the region, many of the mines have closed, being deemed unprofitable, and a number of settlements, such as Iultin, Komsomolsky, and Krasnoarmeysky have been depopulated, with any remaining economic activity producing only very low cargo volumes at best. The result of the closing of the mines in the region is that many people have moved to other regions of Russia. This has caused the almost complete eradication of an export market as well as a corresponding drop in the required level of imports. This causes a lack of demand for the facilities at the port whose precarious profitability leads to a lack of investment. This decaying infrastructure is endemic across the northern sea route and makes the supply route unreliable. For example, winter fuel bound for Pevek did not arrive until the end of November in 1998; this is for a port whose average sailing season lasts only until October 25.