Oil Leaks In Siberia Called Worst Disaster And Forces Putin To Declare Emergency Status

Illustrations (Austris August / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a state of emergency in the city of Norilsk, Siberia following a massive fuel oil leak. Environmentalists call this the worst disaster ever seen in the Arctic. It is suspected that this disaster occurred due to climate change.

As summarized from CBS News the accident occurred last Friday. At that time, the spare fuel tank from the thermal power plant leaked and spilled more than 20 thousand tons of diesel. The spills polluted the rivers and turned the water red.

The parent company of the plant, Norilsk Nickel, explained that the accident occurred because of the melting of the ice layer that sank the support poles under the tank. Meanwhile, in a press conference on Wednesday, June 3, Putin criticized the company for being slow to take action and report the incident.

The governor of Krasnoyarsk, which covers the Norilsk region, admitted to Putin that he only learned about the incident two days after it happened. In fact, he knew about the disaster from several posts on social media.

However, Norilsk Nickel issued a statement to the contrary. The company said it had reported the incident in time to emergency services shortly after the spill became known to the factory. They said the report had already been sent to law enforcement agencies.

The investigative committee which looks at all major crimes in the country reports that three criminal investigations have been launched regarding the pollution incident and the alleged violation of environmental safety procedure regulations. As a result of the incident a senior factory employee has been detained.

Global disaster due to climate change

Meanwhile, company officials are still looking for possible causes of the leak. Vice President Director and Head of Company Operations, Sergey Dyachenko, attributed this incident to climate change.

"We assumed that abnormal temperatures could lead to melting of the ice sheet resulting in partial deterioration of the support of the tank," said Dyachenko.

Permafrost - frozen soil layers - in Russia is said to have thawed rapidly in the Arctic region due to global warming. This caused damage to buildings in Norilsk and other cities.

Environmental conservation agency WWF said the accident was the second largest in modern Russian history since the crude oil spill in the northwestern Komi region in 1994. Meanwhile, Greenpeace compared it to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska which spilled about 36,000 tons of oil.

"This is a global catastrophe, one of the worst in the Arctic," Greenpeace Russia expert Vasily Yablokov told CBS News.

He said how big the impact would be, depending on the speed with which the response team handled this spill. It may very well take years for the environment to recover.

"Norilsk has become an environmental disaster zone and the accident could exacerbate the situation there," Yablokov said.