Norilsk Accident Only First of Many in Russia Because of Global Warming, Environmentalists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 5 – The Norilsk oil spill is the first of what promises to be a long line of technogenic disasters in the Russian north that are the result of global warming, environmental experts say. But instead of addressing that underlying problem, the Kremlin is casting about for someone specific to blame and redistributing property (versia.ru/razliv-topliva-v-norilske-mozhet-stat-nachalom-serii-texnogennyx-katastrof-v-rossijskoj-arktike).

            Indeed, such disasters have long been predicted by experts. Nearly two years ago, the Russian government released a 900-page report saying the melting of the permafrost in the North threatens key infrastructure including oil and gas pipelines. (For the full report, see mnr.gov.ru/upload/iblock/4c6/ГосДоклад_B4_2017.pdf; for a discussion of its findings, see https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/10/global-warming-threatens-key.html.)

            Versiya commentator Aleksey Privalov picks up on those findings and says that leading Russian ecologists are alarmed about the possible repetition of the Norilsk disaster. Three environmentalists, Aleksandr Zakondyrin of the Greens Alliance, Andrey Nagibin of the Green Patrol, and Sergey Shakhmatov of the Russian Greens, visited the accident site.

            The three warned that “the threat exists that analogous events may now occur in any Northern region of Russia” because global warming has undermined pipeline supports.  If their findings are confirmed by others, they urge that Moscow must check “all potentially dangerous objects in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation.”

            It is difficult to overstate how large this threat is. More than 60 percent of Russian territory rests on permafrost which, because of global warming, is rapidly melting.  But it is precisely on that territory that 93 percent of Russian gas and 75 percent of Russian oil is to be found.

            Many of the pipelines were built in Soviet times before global warming hit hard, and they have not been modernized with refrigeration units or other means so that when the ground under them shifts, they do not break, spreading gas or oil onto the delicate environment of the North, Privalov says. Addressing this problem will be costly but not as costly as not doing so.