Over 20,000 tons of diesel leak in Siberia, said to be one of the biggest oil spills in the world. Due to a technical incident, Russian mining company spilled 20,000 tons of oil in the arctic circle, turning a river red and causing environmental imbalance.
The diesel fuel tank at a power plant
belonging to the giant Norilsk Nickel mining group, which is one of the world’s
top nickel and palladium producing company collapsed one of its fuel tank near
the Siberian industrial city of Norilsk, sending some 15,000 tons of diesel
into a nearby waterway and pouring an additional 6,000 tons onto surrounding
land. The leaked oil drifted some 12km from the accident site turning long
stretches of the Ambaranya river crimson red and it’s even 20km away from
Pyasino lake. The spill has contaminated over 350sqkm area.
Diesel fuel spill took place on the
facilities of TPP No. 3, which belong to a company affiliated with nornickel.
The incident was caused by the disruption of the reservoir with the diesel
fuel, which they store for powering TPP No.3 in case of gas supply
interruptions.
They said in a statement that the “incident
could have been caused by soil thawing” and ruled out “negligence in operating
the tank” after inspecting the scene. “The tank is inspected every other year.
There is a whole list of criteria for the inspection, which normally results in
the tank tagged as serviceable,” he explained,” said Sergey Dyachenko,
Nornickel’s First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.
It remains unclear what the cause of the spill may be. Dmitry Streletskiy, a professor at George Washington University, told Bloomberg, “The cause is yet to be determined and is likely a combination of both climate change and infrastructure-related factors.”
The Arctic region is particularly fragile
and the overall damage could be immense. Oleg Mitvol, former deputy head of
Russia’s environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said there had “never been
such an accident in the Arctic zone,” the BBC
reported. Mitvol said the clean-up could take between five and 10
years and cost 100 billion roubles ($1.5 billion).
WWF-Russia recalls EMERCOM, The Ministry of
Natural Resources and the Environment, and the Ministry of Transport of Russian
Federation to provide assistance for organizing efficient oil spill response in
the area on the Federal level. The consequences of the accident are threatening
in terms of health and lives of local communities, they damage ecosystems,
causing perish of fish and birds.
The
Ambarnaya River
We have had unseasonably warm weather for
this time of year, so it should come as no surprise that melting permafrost in
the Arctic has created ground subsidence. This includes the ground that fuel
storage tanks were stood on. If you read mainstream media and the comments from
the company responsible, it is this subsidence that is believed to have caused
the most recent oil spill. An estimated 20,000 tons of diesel oil was
spilt into Ambarnaya River, contaminating an estimated 135 square miles of
water. The company responsible, Norilsk Nickel, is a Russian based company who
has mining operations in five different countries, on three continents
worldwide. In 2019, Norilsk Nickel made a profit of 5.97 billion U.S. dollars.
That’s almost six billion dollars made from destroying the land we live on,
ripping great holes in the earth to extract the earth’s precious resources.
Have
you ever seen images of an oil spill, of the deaths of thousands of aquatic
mammals, birds, fish and plants?
The images haunt me.
The suffering of innocent lives haunts me. So too does the knowledge that, even
if a clean-up operation is ordered, oil in the rivers will stay there for years
and continue to harm the environment, just like in the Ambaranya river.
The Russian Investigative Committee (SK) has
already started a criminal case over the pollution in the Ambarnaya. There is
certainly a case of negligence, as well as the possibility that they tried to
hide the catastrophe: there was a two-day delay in informing the Moscow
authorities about the spill. No one ever is really brought to justice. The rich
and powerful carry on making money from destroying Mother Earth, governments
carry on making laws to enable them and the judicial system lightly taps them
on the wrist. It is cowardly and deeply ironic that the extraction company is
attempting to abdicate responsibility by blaming melting permafrost for the
accident.
If I had my way, I would strip every dollar from these corporations and the people who stand to profit. I would plough the money into restoring health to the area affected and to rewilding our planet, to protecting Earth’s precious wildlife. I would close every mining company, every oil extraction company and every fracking company. This disaster will result in an increased toxification of an already overloaded water system, the death and destruction of our non-human brothers and sisters; fish, plants, insects and birds. The last major oil spill in Russia destroyed huge amounts of plant life, animals, and fish, still the companies can continue, at high risk to the natural world. Respiratory disease in humans in surrounding villages to the Yenisei rose by a third in the year after the major oil spill.
The cost of mining and extracting oil and
other substances is too high. The fossil fuel dependent culture cannot
continue. The destructive effects of this recent oil spill, yet uncalculated,
are likely to be equally astronomical. “The incident led to catastrophic
consequences and we will be seeing the repercussions for years to come,” Sergey
Verkhovets, coordinator of Arctic projects for WWF Russia, said in a statement. “We are talking about dead fish,
polluted plumage of birds, and poisoned animals.”
Nobody knows how many oil spills, chemical agricultural leaching or pesticides sprays our waterways can tolerate. If feels like a moot point to talk about system change amongst so much devastation. Humans have always been taking from nature without bothering about giving back to nature. And amongst this process, such accidents occur and they act as a catalyst for the sheer devastation of nature leading to our ultimate demise. Accidents like this must be prevented from happening. If not, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Image Credits: Google
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