ECOLOGY
11. OIL AND GAS SPILLAGE IN THE RUSSIAN ARCTIC
MAIN SOURCE. Rossiiskaia Arktika: na poroge katastrofy [The Russian Arctic: On the Threshold of Catastrophe]. Moscow: Tsentr ekologicheskoi politiki Rossii, 1996.
A considerable proportion of the oil and gas extracted in the Russian Arctic never reaches the market. It is ejected into the natural environment either as a result of leakage and other accidents or in the normal course of operations.
The worst pollution occurs in the oil and gas fields of northeastern European Russia (the Pechora Basin) and northwestern Siberia (the north of Tyumen Province), where the equipment in use is the most worn-out. Each year the condition of equipment deteriorates further, leading to more frequent accidents at wells and along pipelines. The situation is less acute in Eastern Siberia, for instance on Sakhalin.
More than a third of the 45,000 km of oil pipeline in Russia is nearing or past the end of its 33-year service life. In 1998, nearly 7 per cent of all oil extracted was lost during transportation. The oil pipeline company Transneft was responsible for 71 of 312 major industrial accidents reported in the country that year.
In Western Siberia oil pipelines leak "up to 35,000 times a year." This includes "up to 300" officially registered leaks. (A leak has to be registered if the amount of oil spilled exceeds 10,000 tons.) The total oil spilled on to land and into water is estimated at between 3 and 10 million tons a year. The oil accumulates in low-lying stretches of land, where it destroys birds and other wildlife as well as ancient tree growth and other less hardy species of vegetation.
The best-known oil spillage was the disaster at Usa in 1994, when a main pipeline probably spilled over 200,000 tons, polluting at least 60 square kilometers along the banks of the Rivers Pechora and Kolva. Salmon spawning grounds and drinking water were imperiled. The biggest spillage, however, occurred in 1993 at the Nyagan pumping station in Tyumen Province, not far from the Sosvinsky Nature Preserve. The amount spilled at Nyagan was at least 420,000 tons.
Such accidents are bound to become even more frequent. Besides the aging of pipeline and pumping installations, the gradual melting of the permafrost under the impact of global warming causes pipeline laid over the permafrost to buckle, sag, and break.
From the rivers oil finds its way into the Arctic seas. Marine ecosystems are endangered not so much by oil products dispersed in the water as by the film of oil that forms on the surface. In recent years 70 per cent of the Pechora Sea and large parts of the Ob estuary and of the Tazov inlet have been covered with a film of oil. Spillage from possible oil tanker accidents would come on top of this. Moreover, the natural process of self-purification of the sea is slowed down under Arctic conditions.
Pipeline leakage is, however, by no means the only source of pollution. The oil wells themselves are major polluters. In the course of a year, a single oil well throws into the atmosphere up to 2 tons of carboniferous soot, 8 tons of carbon oxides, over 30 tons of nitrogen oxides, 5 tons of sulfur dioxide, and a large quantity of heavy metals. All of this later settles to earth. It is estimated that each year 2-3 tons of solid particles land in the snow within 500 meters of a well.
Additional pollution occurs when there is an accident at an oil well. A particular danger is presented by the several thousand abandoned oil wells which are scattered across the Russian Arctic. There are 177 such abandoned wells in the Nenets Autonomous District alone. Lack of resources has led to a slackening in the monitoring of these objects.
Gas extraction is accompanied by specific kinds of pollution. In the gas industry too much equipment is worn-out, though the situation is not as bad as in oil. About 35,000 of the 160,000 km of gas pipeline in Russia (over 20 per cent) needs repair or replacement.
Installations at the new gas-fields on the Yamal peninsula and in the Nadym-Pur-Tazov area in the far north of Tyumen Province are at high risk from thawing permafrost.
Due to the difficulty of controlling the flow of gas from underground deposits into the pipelines, a large amount of gas escapes into the atmosphere and has to be burned off. Up to 19 billion cubic meters of gas a year are burned off in jets in Western Siberia, polluting the air with combustion products which include hydrocarbons, nitrogen and carbon oxides -- all greenhouse gases -- and heavy metals. The burning also causes a significant increase in the atmospheric temperature. Flocks of migrating birds, attracted by the bright lights of the burning gas, often perish in the flames.
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