The effect of ice often determines the form and design of offshore structures being constructed in arctic regions, and the ice loads can be the main ones when calculating their stability and strength. For creating reliable and economical structures it is desirable to know more or less positively the expected range of variation of the loads. This requires having information about ice conditions, properties of ice, and reliable methods of calculating ice loads. The present work is aimed at evaluating the last problem. The comparison of various methods being made, of course, does not give grounds for judging the degree of reliability of one or the other of them, but it can suggest the expedient direction of further studies for increasing the reliability of the results obtained.