Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: Oil Spill in Russia’s Arctic Region)

Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Oil Spill in Russia’s Arctic Region

Russia declared a state of emergency on June 3 after a massive oil spill in the Arctic region.

The thermoelectric power plant at Norilsk is built on permafrost, which has weakened over the years owing to climate change.
This caused the pillars that supported the plant’s fuel tank to sink, leading to a loss of containment on May 29.
Reports said that around 20,000 tonnes of diesel oil was released into the Ambarnaya river, which has since drifted 12 km on its surface.
The Ambarnayariver, into which the oil has been discharged, is part of a network that flows into the environmentally sensitive Arctic Ocean.
Russian president Vladimir Putin declared a state of emergency in the region around the Ambarnaya River, in eastern Russia, due north of Mongolia.
Norilsk Nickel, the Russian mining giant that owns the plant, said it had reported the leak in a ‘timely and proper’ way and that the pillars had held the tank in its place ‘for 30 years without difficulty’.

The cost of clean-up operations is estimated to be between 6 and 10 billion rubles(over $76 million)and has compared the incident to Alaska’s 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
Its estimate does not include atmospheric damage due to greenhouse gases and soil pollution.
Clean-up of oil in cold environments is particularly challenging due to low biodegradation rates, evidenced by the long-lasting effects of the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the global average, especially in Siberia where the spill occurred and where the landscape is shaped by permafrost that's melting.

Environmentalists have said the river would be difficult to clean, given its shallow waters and remote location, as well as the magnitude of the spill.
The government expects environmental restoration in the region to take 10 years.
World Wildlife Fund described this as the second-largest known oil leak in modern Russia’s history in terms of volume

Norilsk Nickel, which is the world’s leading nickel and palladium producer, has also been blamed for another leak in 2016, when pollutants from its plant leaked into another river in the region.
In comparison, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound spilled 11 million gallons, or about 346,000 tons (314,000 metric tons) of oil in 1989, while the DeepwaterHorizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico spilled 200 million gallons, or about 6.3 million tons (5.7 million metric tons) of oil in 2010.
The worst oil spill in history, the Gulf War oil spill spewed an estimated 8 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf after Iraqi forces opened valves of oil wells and pipelines as they retreated from Kuwait in 1991. The oil slick reached a maximum size of 101 miles by 42 miles and was five inches thick.