Massive Russian Oil Spill Turns River Red in Arctic Circle

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has declared a state of emergency after a massive oil spill in the Arctic Circle near the Siberian City of Norilsk.   20,000 tons of diesel oil leaked into a river within the Arctic Circle.

20,000 tons of diesel oil leaked into a river when a fuel tank at a power plant owned by Norilsk Nickel collapsed.   Norilsk Nickel is the world's leading nickel and palladium producer, and is one of Russia's most polluting companies, releasing approximately 1.67 million tons of harmful sulphur dioxide every year into the air, according to 2018 figures  The spill has contaminated a 135 square mile area, and is believed to be the second largest in modern Russian history in terms of volume, an expert from the World Wildlife Fund, Alexei Knizhnikov, said.  Greenpeace has compared it to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

Putin expressed anger after discovering officials only learnt about the incident two days later.  In a televised video conference, Putin lambasted the head of the company over its response.  "Why did government agencies only find out about this two days after the fact?" he asked the subsidiary's chief, Sergei Lipin. "Are we [now]going to learn about emergency situations from social media?"

The region's governor, Alexander Uss, claimed  that he became aware of the oil spill two days after "alarming information appeared in social media".  In a very non-specific statement, Norilsk Nickel said the incident had been reported in a "timely and proper" way.  Putin has ordered an investigation into the accident and a manager at the power plant has since been detained.

The accident happened when the pillars supporting a fuel tank at a power plant began to sink. The area is built on permafrost which has been melting as the climate warms.  The leaked oil drifted about 8 miles from the accident site, turning long stretches of the Ambarnaya river crimson red. The state of emergency means extra forces will be sent to the area to assist with the clean-up operation.

The incident has prompted stark warnings from environmental groups, who say the scale of the spill and geography of the river mean it will be difficult to clean up.  Oleg Mitvol, former deputy head of Russia's environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said "there has never been such an accident in the Arctic zone".  He said the clean-up could cost over $1.5 billion and take between five and 10 years.

It is not the first time Norilsk Nickel has been involved in industrial accidents that threaten the environment.  In 2014, a Russian-owned Norilsk Nickel refinery in western Finland leaked 66,000 kilograms of nickel into the Kokemäki River.  After the leak, the nickel concentrations were 400 times normal levels. This was the largest known nickel release in Finnish history.  In 2016, it admitted that an accident at one of its plants was responsible for turning the Daldykan river red.

Russia's minister of natural resources, Dmitry Kobylkin, warned against trying to burn off such a vast quantity of fuel oil.  He proposed trying to dilute the oil with reagents. Only the emergencies ministry with military support could deal with the pollution, he said.  Barges with booms could not contain the slick because the Ambarnaya river is too shallow, he warned.  He suggested pumping the oil on to the adjacent tundra, and President Putin added: "the soil there is probably saturated [with oil] already".