Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 11 – Moscow’s drive to
extract more oil and gas is leading not only to massive spills and the despoiling
of the environment especially in the Russian North but to the destruction of the
land on which the numerically small peoples of the North depend and
consequently pushing them toward extinction, Elena Sakirko says.
The assistant head of energy
programs at Greenpeace Russia says that the only hopeful sign is that some of
the members of these communities are beginning to resist, although most are
being kept quiet as a result of joint acts of intimidation by the oil and gas
companies in collusion with the Russian government (7x7-journal.ru/item/80841).
Sakirko points out that Russia is
the world’s leading in oil spills but just how many they are is generally
something the companies and the authorities are able to hide. But it is
estimated that 97 percent of these spills happen because aging pipes are not
replaced in a timely manner and because the companies can avoid responsibility
for the damage the spills do.
The situation is worsened, the
ecological activist continues, because Russian companies don’t extract all the
oil they could from existing fields by using modern technologies but simply
close those fields down and move on to others, leaving the old fields to rust
out and leak oil into the surrounding ground and water.
Russian companies have more than
enough profits to pay for ensuring that aging pipelines are replaced and modern
technologies are used to extract all the oil that can be instead of as now
allowing large numbers of spills large and small to take place each year and
leaving an estimated 30 percent of extractable oil in old fields.
Unfortunately, they are under no
pressure from either their managements which are trying to make as large a
profit as possible in as short a time as possible or the government which still
seems to prefer extensive rather than intensive development regardless of what
that means for the environment or the population, Sakirko continues.
But increasingly they face organized
opposition from local people who can see how what the oil companies and Moscow
are doing affects their way of life and even lives, she says. She points to the
findings of a recent survey in the Komi Republic showing the growth of
opposition to the oil companies (slideshare.net/ZirconResearchGroup/ss-41688859).
Oil
spills, the Komis say, have worsened the quality of drinking water, reduced the
stock of fish in rivers and otherwise disrupted the traditional economic
activities of their nation. And they point out that none of the promised “benefits”
of development – better roads and higher incomes – have come to members of
their community.
Ninety-five
percent of the residents of the districts where the survey was carried out,
Sakirko says, live in housing that is not connected to natural gas, “and a
large part of them lack Internet connectivity.” In addition, they do not have
adequate hospitals or day care for their children.
In
many ways, she suggests, the situation among the Komis may be less bad than
elsewhere in the Russian North because of the work of the Committee to Save the
Pechora that has functioned for more than 25 years and that has forced the oil
companies to be somewhat more careful in their dealings with the population.
In
the Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous District, there have been real problems because
Surgutneftegaz has moved not only into areas where the local indigenous people
live and work but into supposedly protected national parks and preserves,
actions that have sparked controversy over the fate of the Numto Park and its
lakes.
Local
residents, Sakirko says, “began to send letters to the ministry of natural
resources and to the [local] administration with request not to change the zoning
of the park.” They did so after the company organized hearings supposedly for
that purpose but in fact simply to provide cover for what they had already
succeeded in having officials do.
Residents
came to the hearings and “a large segment” spoke against what the company was
doing, an action that was “the first time that such hearings took place with
such social condemnation.” But residents soon discovered the company’s ruse and
complained for generally to various Russian academic institutions.
Initially,
there was no coverage of all this, Sakirko says; but then the company violated
what is for the animist residents a local holy lake and its shaman – and that
triggered demands that did receive coverage that the oil company not be allowed
to destroy the lake. The company
countered by promising to build an Orthodox church for the local population.
These
protests by the population highlighted a serious problem: “there does not exist
a legal mechanism when [the local people most immediately affected] can say ‘no’”
to the oil companies. Moreover, they have few defenses against the joint
actions of the companies and local administrations who arrest on trumped up
charges those who stand up to the companies.
The
Numto Park case and that of its shaman have attracted media attention in Moscow
and the West, Sakirko notes; but she points out that in this enormous region, “there
are many cases about which no one writes or reads.” And that pattern which
works to the benefit of the companies and the Russian state is driving the
local populations to despair.
In
fact, she says, there are no situations when representatives of the indigenous
peoples commit crimes which as a rule they are forced to commit as a result of the
presence of the oil companies,” the last and often most violent form of protest
of communities which are now on the edge of extinction.
Many
beyond this region, Sakirko says, are indifferent to the passing of these
nations. But as a result, “our world will become more homogenized;” and
everyone everywhere will be the loser.
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