Catastrophe for the Arctic: a large-scale oil spill occurred in Russia

On May 29, about 21 thousand tons of fuel spilled from the reservoir of a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel in Norilsk. Environmentalists call this the largest environmental disaster in the Arctic. How will the consequences of the accident be eliminated and who will be responsible for it, the publication found out with the BBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

On May 29, at the site of the power plant of the Norilsk-Taimyr Energy Company, 100% owned by Norilsk Nickel, a tank burst due to subsidence of supports. Diesel fuel leaked from it. 15 thousand tons ended up in the Daldykan and Ambarnaya rivers, another 6 thousand - in the ground.

Ambarnaya flows into the huge lake Pyasino. Next is the Kara Sea. Having assessed the scale of the incident, the authorities began to look for a way to eliminate the consequences of the accident. The day before, it was discussed at an online meeting with the participation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Uss ended his report by saying that he does not know how to cope with this situation in 14 days.

Greenpeace says that the accident of such a large scale in the polar Arctic is the first. The Ministry of Natural Resources believes that ecosystem restoration in the affected area will take at least 10 years.

“The damage is very large. More than one billion worth of damage was caused to water alone, and if we talk about land, the losses are much more significant,” Deputy Minister Elena Panova said on Thursday.

“It is difficult to expect that this problem will be completely resolved in the Arctic,” said Boris Morgunov, director of the HSE Institute of Ecology. “This is a real disaster for the Arctic.”

According to the expert, even with qualified specialists to clean up the area, “the consequences will be felt for three to five years.”

“As a rule, nature itself copes with those approximately 20% of what cannot be collected in similar situations in other regions. In the Arctic, nature will not cope with this. Microbes have the main decomposing effect on oil products, and in the Arctic their activity is negligible,” Morgunov explained the complexity of the situation.

How to deal with spilled fuel

First Vice President of Norilsk Nickel Sergei Dyachenko said that the company plans to collect the fuel that ended up in the rivers in special containers and preserve it until a solution to the problem is found.

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On Saturday, June 6, two planes will be delivered to Norilsk by tanks for storing petroleum products with a volume of 16 thousand tons. They plan to preserve the pumped diesel-water fluid until solutions are found on how to evacuate the containers or the fluid itself, said Dyachenko.

“Spills of this kind are filled with sorbents, these sorbents are accumulated and destroyed,” Morgunov explained. — They are usually destroyed in special ovens. But these ovens must meet certain requirements. The most important thing is the presence of serviceable gas purification filters in such thermal installations. When petroleum products are burned, a large amount of extremely dangerous substances are released into the atmosphere.”

“Another issue is the huge amount of material to dispose of. Most likely, the necessary installations are not physically available in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. I can assume that a decision will be made to take everything to the central regions and destroy it at enterprises that have sufficient capacity. This is a feasible task, but with reservations,” the expert added.

The oil slick on the Ambarnaya River is protected by booms. Rescuers continue to remove contaminated soil for temporary storage, where it will remain until Norilsk Nickel finds a solution for its processing.

According to Rosprirodnadzor, now there is no danger for oil pollution of Lake Pyasino, which belongs to the Kara Sea basin.

“It is premature to say that the slick is moving towards the Kara Sea. Marine barrier booms were installed in the region, and the entire main part of the slick was stopped,” said the head of the Norilsk Development Agency, Maxim Mironov.

“The main thing is to pump everything out in a timely manner,” he added.

“If we are talking about water pollution, then it will be impossible to collect everything from there,” says Morgunov from the HSE Institute of Ecology. — Booms, of course, protect against the spread of a certain amount of pollutant, but this substance, if not removed, quickly settles to the bottom, pollutes the sludge, gets mixed, and this will require long and expensive work to clean up the bottom sediments. Plus, some of these substances move with water over long distances.”

“With what is collected from the ground, everything will depend on how much the permafrost has degraded at the spill site. If it has degraded, this means that the fuel has reached a great depth. If not, then collecting fuel from the surface using sorbents is a technically feasible procedure,” the expert added.

“There will be no annealing”

The head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Yevgeny Zinichev, on Thursday said that a decision on the method of liquidation of the spill has already been found. However, he did not say which one.

“The most important question is how we will eliminate the leakage of petroleum products. I think the solution has been found. And we will fulfill it,” the minister said at a meeting in Norilsk.

The press service of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations clarified that 10 oil collection systems, helicopters and one airplane will be used for fuel disposal. The day before, Governor Uss reported to Putin that within a radius of 20 kilometers from the accident there was no road, and the river itself was not navigable. The main option for recycling collected petroleum products is combustion in special containers, said the head of the region.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Rosprirodnadzor are categorically against burning.

“I can’t imagine how to burn such an amount of fuel in the Arctic zone now. To be honest, this is a big doubt for me. We must try to extract the fuel as much as possible, mix it with the appropriate chemical reagents, and if it becomes really difficult, burn something,” Minister Dmitry Kobylkin told Putin.

Svetlana Radionova, head of Rosprirodnadzor, located in Norilsk, on Thursday, May 4, said that there would be no incineration as a way of disposing of spilled oil products.

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“We don't see any disposal through incineration at the moment. There will be no annealing of petroleum products,” she said.

Energy Minister Alexander Novak promised the day before to discuss the elimination of the accident with oil companies, “which may have previously encountered such a situation.” On Thursday, Transneft and Gazprom Neft announced the dispatch of specialists and equipment to Norilsk.

Norilsk Nickel expects to completely remove fuel spills on water bodies within 14 days, Dyachenko said on the Rossiya 1 TV channel.

How to look for the guilty

On Wednesday, June 3, the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) opened three criminal cases regarding the accident - damage to land, water pollution and violation of environmental protection rules during work.

On Thursday, June 4, a fourth case was opened - this time under the article of negligence. This was done “due to untimely notification of the emergency situation,” the ICR said in a statement.

The day before, the head of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Krasnoyarsk governor complained to Putin that only two days after the accident they received information allowing them to assess its scale. Norilsk Nickel, in turn, stated that it was informed in a timely manner about how the situation was developing.

On Thursday morning, May 4, a court in Norilsk arrested Vyacheslav Starostin, the head of the boiler-turbine shop of the TPP-3, who was detained on the eve. He refused to testify. In the near future he is scheduled to be charged.

So far, only the shop manager has been held accountable. Meanwhile, State Duma deputy from United Russia Alexander Yakubovsky sent a request to the head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin with a request to temporarily suspend the company’s management, including the main owner of Norilsk Nickel, Vladimir Potanin, who ranks first in the ranking of the Russian magazine Forbes.

“According to available information, it was the management of the enterprise, led by Potanin, that over the past five years has refused to the managers of JSC NTEC applications for financing the overhaul of tanks,” RBC quoted the deputy’s request as saying. The reservoirs were put into operation in 1985, Yakubovsky said.

Norilsk Nickel itself believes that the reason for the depressurization of the fuel tank could be the “melting” of the soil. “We can assume that as a result of abnormally mild temperatures, the permafrost could have thawed, which led to partial subsidence of the supports on which the tank stands,” Dyachenko explained two days ago.

Norilsk Nickel shares fell by 4% on Thursday, June 9,5. As a result, the estimate of Potanin's fortune decreased by $1,5 billion in one day, Forbes magazine calculated. However, Potanin’s fortune still allows him to be considered the richest businessman in Russia.

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