A 100-ton oil spill from a pipeline in the Komi region of northeastern Russia on the night of May 11 created a huge 1,300-acre spill and polluted the river in the Kolva region, where it leaked. about 10 tons of the total amount, announced the head of the regulatory authority for nature protection (Rosprirodnadzor) Svetlana Radionova.
Russian oil company Lukoil said the clean-up operation began after a leak in a pipeline starting at the Offskoye field and ending at a refinery in the neighboring Kariaga area.
The governor of the Komi region, Vladimir Uimba, said the clean-up would take two to three weeks.
One of the worst oil spills in Russian history has occurred in the hydrocarbon-rich Komi region due to a leak in an oil pipeline in August 1994 due to an outdated pipeline network. At that time, a total of 79,000 tons of oil or 585,000 barrels had been leaked. Independent estimates put the figure at 2 million barrels.
On May 12, the supply of the leaking pipeline was stopped, while on the same night in the city of Usinsk an emergency regime was imposed.
The city authorities also announced that there is no risk of water contamination, after the oil spill in the area of ​​the water reservoir from which the city of Usinsk is supplied.
Komi Republic Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Alexei Kuznetsov said today that the leak had stopped. Following the incident, the company was prosecuted while the prosecutor’s office is conducting investigations.
The nature protection regulator (Rosprirodnadzor) has legally demanded that the operation of the oil collector at the Lukoil-Komi plant, from which the oil spilled into the Kolva River, be stopped, as it considers that the collector does not meet safety standards. .
Leakage in the Arctic as well
Russian company Nornickel announced today that it is pumping diesel oil into one of its fuel tanks in the Arctic after a 20-liter spill was observed, adding that there were no environmental impacts.
A year ago, 21,000 tons of oil leaked from a defective tank at the Nornickel power plant in the Norilsk region, polluting the ground and an adjacent river in the Arctic. The accident, the largest in the Arctic region, resulted in the company paying € 1.64 billion in fines.
The new leak that occurred today is much smaller, the company announced, adding that it has already collected the leaked fuel. The leak was detected during a routine inspection today in a tank with a total capacity of 20,000 tons.
Nornickel also said it was pumping the remaining fuel from the tank, which it pumped into other tanks to minimize the risks. However, he did not reveal the amount of fuel left, nor the reason for the leak.
Russia’s nature protection regulator, Rosprirodnadzor, said the amount of diesel fuel leaking from the bottom of the tank was due to corrosion.
Nornickel attributed the accident that took place last year to a possible melting of the permanently icy (peripheral) ground. However, technical inspections carried out by the Russian regulatory authority concluded that the leak caused in 2020 was due to errors made during the construction and maintenance of the tank.
Nornickel dismantled some of the old fuel tanks after the accident and announced that it would invest 100 billion rubles (1.1 billion euros) in the infrastructure to prevent similar leaks in the future.
(file photo)
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