RUSSIA-ENVIRONMENT: Russian Oil Spills Cause Worry

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Judith Perera and Andrei Ivanov

MOSCOW, Feb 2 1996 (IPS) - When more than 400 tonnes of crude oil spilled from a ruptured oil pipeline near the Russian village of Dukshanov the other day, authorities quickly cordoned off the area and started an inquiry.

Investigators said that spill, which covered 18 hectares of land in the Russian republic of Adyghea, was caused by would-be oil thieves who tampered with a safety valve.

Such incidents are occurring with greater and greater frequency in Russia. Last week’s oil spill in the village of Dukshanov was preceded by three on Jan. 16, according to media reports and environmentalists who monitor the problem.

One of those which took place on Jan. 16 took place in the Volga region, there was another in the Arctic and one in the Siberian town of Angarsk.

After Dukshanov, when oil leaked from the Tikhoretsk-Tuapse pipeline, the Ministry for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Natural Disasters said the ingredient leaked into the River Giaga and a nearby lake despite makeshift dams hastily built by emergency teams.

Frost and snow slowed the spread of the oil which at first spurted out of the pipeline in a 50-metre-high gusher. There is growing concern because the spill is less than 12 kilometres from the River Laba which flows in to the Kuban river which serves Krasnodar reservoir.

Some of the oil has been collected and pumped into tanks. Some was burned off. An oil slick discovered in the Syzranka River in the Samara region of the Volga River basin was thought to have leaked from a corroded underwater stretch of the Syzran-Volnoye pipeline.

The slick covered a 2.5-kilometre stretch of the river. Emergency teams are still trying to collect the oil from under the ice. There are fears that when the ice melts the oil may reach the Volga River which the Syzranka joins just 8 kilometres downstream.

The Volga is also in danger from a spill which occurred the week before when the Samara-Kuzmichi oil pipeline was ruptured spilling about an estimated 500 tons of oil 10 km south-west of Saratov. This has also been attributed to corrosion.

The rupture is four kilometres from the Volga. Official reports initially put the spill at 100 tonnes but clean-up operations have already resulted in the collection of 150 tonnes. “At least 500 tonnes was leaked,” says a member of the local Ecology Committee.

“A dam is being built to try to contain the polluted water but there is a real danger that oil could reach the Volga in the spring thaw,” says the member.

In the northwest Arctic region, some 70 tonnes of oil leaked from a hole in a the Ukhta-Yaroslavl pipeline some six kilometres from the town of Kotlas in the Archangelsk region. Work is underway to collect and burn off the oil in difficult winter conditions to prevent it from reaching the Severnaya Dvina river.

This came after a major rupture of the same pipeline on Dec. 24 spewing over 400 tonnes of oil over an area of 5,000 square metres — over half of it under ice. Oil also polluted the River Ropcha which flows into the Vym, Vychegda and Severnaya Dvina rivers.

So far over 800 cubic metres of oil mixed with contaminated soil, snow and ice has been collected and work is continuing. The northwest Arctic was the site of one of the world’s worst ever oil spills. This occurred in 1994 when a rupture of the Usinsky oil pipeline in the Komi republic released an estimated 200,000 tonnes of oil.

Clean up is still going on and is expected to cost over 140 million dollars which is being financed partly by the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development as well as by the Kokmineft oil company which was responsible.

The other two areas of Russia where major clean-up operations are currently under way following recent oil spills are Perm and Bashkortostan.

Over 250 tonnes of oil spouted from the Surgut-Polotsk oil pipeline on Jan 11 as a result of damage caused during earth- moving work in the village of Tyoplaya Gora some 175 kilometres to the north-east of Perm.

Some 650 square metres of land has been contaminated. Perm Environmental Protection Committee estimates clean-up costs at several billion rubles.

Meanwhile work continues to try to minimise the consequences of the accident at the Tuimazy-Omsk-Novosibirsk oil pipeline near to Ufa in Bashkortostan on 26 December. According to the Environment Ministry the concentration of oil products in the Belaya River in is over the permissible limit by seven times. Contamination has reached the neighbouring republic of Tatarstan.

So far 895 tonnes of oil-water mix have been collected. The 36-year-old pipeline, laid on the river bed, corroded and was releasing oil for an estimated two days before the leak was discovered.

Bashkortostan Environment Minister Rustem Khamitov initially said only 100 tonnes of oil had been discharged into the river. He later revised this to 468 tonnes. However Professor Mars Safarov of Bashkiria State University says that “judging from the size of the oil slick the real figure is probably nearer to 2,400 tonnes”.

Estimates from Tatarstan, however, put the figure even higher. based on contamination levels at the town of Aktanysh on the lower reaches of the Belaya.

Ayrat Nasybullin, an official of the Tatar Environment Ministry estimated that up to 13,000 tonnes of oil may have been released. He added that oil concentrations at Aktanysh reached 69 times the norm. “The scale of the accident in Bashkortostan has been grossly understated,” he says.

Russia has over 200,000 kilometres of pipelines, 20 per cent of which have been in operation for over 30 years and half for over 20 years. The Ministry of Fuel and Power has been pressing, so far without success, for a special fund to finance pipeline upgrading.

Academician Alexei Yablokov, Chairman of the Russian Security Council’s interdepartmental commission for environmental safety, wants tougher sanctions for polluters.

“Only then can numerous accidents at oil and gas pipelines be avoided”, he says. He estimates the number of major accidents at 700 a year. “So far in only 10 per cent of the cases of leaks of gas and oil products the culprits can be found to be fined”.