As reported by The Moscow Times, Russian authorities said the fuel spill at an Arctic power station in early 2020 was the largest in world history, a senior emergency official said this Thursday.
Some 21,000 tons of oil spilled onto surrounding soil and waterways near the city of Norilsk after a diesel tank belonging to a subsidiary of Russian metals giant Nornickel collapsed on May 29.
“Never has such a quantity of liquid diesel fuel been spilled in the history of mankind,” the state news agency RIA Novosti told reporters, citing Deputy Minister of Emergencies Alexander Chupriyan.
“We already trapped [the fuel] in the Arctic zone,” he said.
Meanwhile, a Nornickel-funded team of scientists took a more optimistic tone with their discovery of the self-cleaning capabilities of the five polluted rivers, according to their final report cited by state news agency TASS on Wednesday.
“The microflora in the studied waters has adapted to petroleum products and may participate in their decomposition,” said members of the so-called Great Norilsk Expedition organized by the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in August.
Nornickel is currently challenging a $ 2 billion damages lawsuit with Russia’s state environmental watchdog.
A different report commissioned by Nornickel said last month that the oil spill was “inevitable” due to design flaws, management failures and rising temperatures in the region.
