The accident on the Ob River: how much Sibur will pay for an ecological disaster

Yelena Ivanova, Natalia Seibil

The Rostechnadzor Commission will publish the results of the audit after March 25. But before they were announced, experts named four probable reasons why a pipe burst, connecting two gas processing plants of Sibur near Nizhnevartovsk:

“Defects in the joints of pipeline sections; metal loss caused by external and / or internal corrosion and erosion; change in linear loads on the pipeline; external damage caused by the environment",

At least two of these reasons point to the company's fault. In "Sibur" the pipe is said to be in perfect order. On the request of "New News" on the causes of the accident in the company said that this section of the pipeline was built in 2001, and in 2020 certified company has issued a safety certificate, valid until 2023: "In this part of the defects of the examination is not detected, regulations supervisory authorities were not issued. The exact cause of the incident is not yet known. The investigation, which will establish the cause, is being conducted by the Rostekhnadzor commission, which includes the company's technical specialists".

General director "SiburTyumenGaz" Alexander Teplyakov said that the enterprise in the area of responsibility of which the accident occurred had carried out preparatory work before a team of divers began to survey: lines to identify possible damage".

The main question now, when did the accident really start: on March 6, when did the fire occur, or two weeks earlier, as WWF suggests? The gas mixture broke through the pipe and caught fire last weekend, then several tens of tons of gas could get into the water from 700 tons of NGLs. Sibur claims that 90% of the mixture was quickly removed from the pipe and burned in afterburner barns outside the river. Thus, up to 60 tons got to the Ob, and since we are talking about flammable hydrocarbons, they, according to the company, burned out.

According to another version, based on images from space, the leak began much earlier than the fire - in about two weeks. If so, then the scale is different, says Yelena Sakirko, Head of the Energy Department of the Russian branch of Greenpeace*:

- We do not know how much propane-butane mixture got, but we understand that this can cause significant damage to the ecosystem, and the river, and fish stocks. There are discrepancies that can be verified. The official release of Sibur says that the nearest settlement is 44 km away, but there it is actually closer. There are both dacha settlements and villages. The investigation is underway, and we are trying to take into account the official information that appears, and the records and videos that are posted on social networks.

Alexey Knizhnikov, head of WWF-Russia's environmental responsibility program for business, wrote on Facebook:

“The distance from the place of breakthrough and burning to settlements is not 44 km, as stated in a press release from SIBUR on March 6, but much less. To residential quarters in Nizhnevartovsk - about 11 km, to the nearest residential buildings in Solnechny village - 8 km, to the nearest garden plots - 3-4 km".

Why Sibur needed to mislead the public and report deliberately incorrect and easily verifiable data in its press release is hardly explainable. The first thought that arises in people is that they are hiding something. It is also not clear why the gas giant fell with all its might on the Ugra public figure Sergey Shevchik for publishing a video (here) about the fish kill on the Ob in the Surgut region, located 200 km downstream, and said that the the accident forbade fishing. Sibur's legal service believes that the published information tarnishes the company's business reputation. Lawyers, referring to the comment of the senior state inspector of fish protection Dmitry Yaitsky, say that death is a natural process, just because of severe frost and ice, oxygen does not get into the water. For this reason, a public figure must immediately remove information from all public pages and YouTube, otherwise Sibur will apply to "state bodies, including the court." At the same time, ecologist Alexey Knizhnikov recalled that although fish are killed regularly, “there was also a man-made accident with the ingress of hydrocarbons into the aquatic environment, so it is fair to assume that these two events overlapped and led to the worst consequences”:

"We are discussing, including with representatives of the company, the issue that the leak may have taken place before the fire happened. This means that the duration of the intake of hydrocarbons into the aquatic environment was much longer, not one or two days, but several weeks. All of this should be the subject of assessments of the environmental damage caused by the accident. Research is currently underway with representatives of scientific institutions, including the Federal Agency for Fishery. So far, there was information in the media that the death of the fish was not related to this accident. However", - we must wait for scientific reports.

Oil spills and hydrocarbons entering the water, tundra, soil, and swamps cause significant environmental damage for many years. It is necessary to take water samples and monitor, watch the situation with animals, fish and monitor the spread, because the pollutants could be carried much further downstream, ecologists say.

The number of man-made accidents in the country is growing, they say. In one day - the same March 6, it became known about three cases when significant damage was caused to nature. Along with the fire on the Ob in the Khabarovsk Territory, a train with oil products derailed, several tanks overturned. Tank cars in Yaroslavl at the refinery caught fire. These are only those cases that the media wrote about. Unfortunately, there are cases that do not make it to the public agenda, and we will find out about them after some time or never at all, says Elena Sakirko. When environmentalists learned that Norilsk Nickel had paid a record amount to compensate for environmental damage on the Pyasina River in the amount of 146 billion rubles, they were very happy:

"We had the first reaction: it's good that such a fine was imposed. Finally, we have assigned adequate compensation for damage, and this can be an incentive for other companies to take their business more responsibly and do everything to avoid such things. I believe that if Sibur is awarded the same compensation for damage, it will be good. It should be adequate to what happened".

When asked by Novye Izvestia about the amount allocated for the elimination of the consequences of the accident on the Ob, the representatives of Sibur did not answer, just as what reserves were created to cover the damage from the environmental disaster. However, the company assured that “if, based on the results of the research, damage to the environment is established, the company is ready to reimburse it in full in the manner prescribed by law”.

But this is not enough. Environmentalists are convinced that it is time not only to react to what is happening, but also to change approaches, switch to modern technologies, and exclude some territories from industrial development altogether. They have other value besides extracting natural resource rent, experts say.

* The Russian Ministry of Justice added Greenpeace to the list of foreign agents.