Three men were arrested after massive diesel pollution spilled into an Arctic river in Russia, including contaminating a freshwater lake. They are three leaders of the thermal power plant from which the fuel leak came, said the Russian investigation committee on Wednesday. They face up to five years in prison.
The head of the company - a subsidiary of the large Russian mining group Norilsk Nickel - Pavel Smirnov, the main engineer Alexei Stepanov and his deputy Yuri Kuznetsov have been arrested, the committee said in a statement. They are accused of having continued to use the fuel tank in question without carrying out the repairs which were necessary in 2018.
The tank continued to be used
“Despite the state of emergency, the tank (…) continued to be used in violation of safety rules. As a result, an accident has occurred, "said the investigation committee, which must now decide whether the three men will be held in pre-trial detention for an extended period. In a statement sent to the Russian agency Ria Novosti, Norilsk Nickel condemned measures "unreasonably severe".
"The leaders of the (electro-thermal) power stations are cooperating with the police and they would be much more useful at the scene" of the accident, said Nikolai Outkin, vice-president of Norilsk Nickel, in this release.
21,000 tonnes of fuel in the wild
On May 29, 21,000 tonnes of fuel from the tank of a thermal power plant spilled into the Ambarnaïa River and surrounding land. Pollution has since reached Lake Piassino, a 70 km long freshwater reservoir.
The group's board of directors was due to meet on Wednesday to discuss the accident, its press service confirmed to AFP. Tuesday evening, during a conference call with investors, group officials argued that the accident was due to the thawing of permafrost - or permafrost - consequence of global warming, which would have caused the pillars supporting the tank to collapse.
The tank in question, built in 1985, had been repaired in "2017-2018" and inspected in 2018, said the group, saying that "all recommendations" made following this inspection had been "followed and monitored". Norilsk Nickel officials admitted on Tuesday that the state of permafrost has not been monitored so far, and that a full audit of its infrastructure will be carried out. The accident is considered by environmental organizations and the authorities to be the worst oil accident in the Russian Arctic.
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