Photo:TWD
Oil spill in Arctic Circle was flagged as a potential threat years before recent leak
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | JUNE 5th 2020
Following the spillage of over 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel oil into an Arctic Circle river, Russian President declared a State of Emergency. However, it’s also been revealed that a Russian safety watchdog had warned years before that a spill was imminent, bringing more flack to the company responsible.
The spill had occurred last Friday, following the collapse of a fuel tank at a power plant, near the Siberian city of Norilsk. The company responsible, a subsidiary of mining giant Norilsk Nickel (world's leading nickel and palladium producer), had already been warned about the violations at the fuel plant site where the incident occurred back in 2017-2018, reported the RBC media portal.
The ordering of a State of Emergency means that more forces are being deployed to clean up the fuel spill, putting primary focus on the incident.
The director of the power plant, Vyacheslav Starostin, was placed into custody and ordered into pretrial detention until June 31, by the Krasnoyarsk Krai regional court. He was later, one July 4, charged with the violation environmental regulations, as well as negligence.
A criminal case was launched in response to the spill and alleged negligence by the Russian Investigative Committee (SK). This is primarily due to the apparent two-day delay that had occurred between the spill, and alerting of the Moscow authorities over it.
President Vladimir Putin expressed anger over learning the incident was reported late. Yevgeny Zinichev, the Russian Minister for Emergencies, told President Putin that before bothering to alert the ministry, the plant spent the two days trying to contain the spill and keep it from spreading.
“Why did government agencies only find out about this two days after the fact?” President Putin asked the subsidiary's chief, Sergei Lipin, in a televised video conference on Wednesday. “Are we going to learn about emergency situations from social media?”
Meanwhile Norilsk Nickel said itself, in a statement, that the incident was reported in a way they describe as “timely and proper.”
Rostekhnadzor were the safety watchdogs on charge of spot-checking the facility back in 2017-2018, and had warned the facility of the many violations they found had been committed. One such major violation in the company’s subsidiary facility included a concern over the stability of the fuel tanks at the site, RBC reported.
Along with the many other violations, the concerns around the stability of the fuel tanks had to do primarily with rust. According to the station, there was a failure to clean rust off the facility roofs and walls of some of its fuel tanks. On top of this, it had been instructed to clean the violations by authorities years before the incident occurred.
The media portal went on to report that the company Norilsk Nickel had denied the violations ever being reported to them, having stated that they had not been identified at the fuel tank that lost pressure, but rather, concerned over the other fuel tanks.
The incident had been forewarned not only by the watchdogs, but also by scientists who have frequently issued warning regarding building facilities built on permafrost, as the rising menace of climate change causes oncoming threat to the very structure of these facilities.
By Patryk Krych | © The World Daily 2020
