Devastation from Russian Oil Spill

[The.Greenbase@gb.greenpeace.org]

>> DEVASTATION ON THE TUNDRA: KOMI SPILLS CAUSED IRREPARABLE

                    ************************
                    GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE
                    ************************

>> DEVASTATION ON THE TUNDRA: KOMI SPILLS CAUSED IRREPARABLE
DAMAGE

MOSCOW, May 4 1995 (GP) Greenpeace today said that the oil spills
in Russia's Komi region have caused irreparable damage to the
fragile Arctic environment which can never be fully cleaned up.

A Greenpeace team has spent the past two weeks in and around the
town of Usinsk, where at least 100,000 tonnes of oil have spilled
from oil pipelines since last August.  Campaigner Paul Horsman
said from Moscow today that the damage is permanent and a total
clean up is impossible.

The oil spills devastated huge areas of marshes.  The clean up,
while attempting to contain the oil, has caused further damage to
the environment through the building of roads and new dams to
contain the oil.  Outside these containment areas, the clean up
is even more primitive:  workers breaking ice and scraping the
oil into buckets to be loaded onto waiting trucks.  The remaining
oil is then either burnt or covered with sand.

"We are talking of an environment where tracks from trucks made
50 years ago can still be seen.  This oil has wrecked the region,
and there's more damage to come," said Horsman.

He noted that the company cleaning up, Hartec, was "doing its
best" with the money available but it is not enough.  The total
loan of just over US$130 million has been made available for
clean up and pipeline repair, whereas more than US$2.3 billion
was spent ion the Exxon Valdez spill - only a quarter the size of
this one.

"Hartec is saying that it is here to clean up the Komi spill
which occurred in August and September last year. But that spill
has continued every few weeks from the same pipeline -- there is
not one 'Komi spill' -- it's all part of the same problem, and
Hartec cannot pretend that they can clean it all up," said
Horsman.

Horsman said Greenpeace had a number of questions about the
involvement of the multinational oil companies in Russia and the
policies of the lending institutions such as the World Bank, the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the
International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Overseas Private
Investment Corporation (OPIC).

The multinational oil companies such as British Gas, whose oil
pollutes the tundra, are not taking part in the clean up - they
are nowhere to be seen in Usinsk or near the polluted areas.
Ironically, British Gas has a separate company called "Pipeline
Integrity" which declares itself a world expert in looking after
pipelines.

The EBRD, before funding the KomiArcticOil project to the tune of
US$80 million, employed a Canadian company, AGRA from Calgary, to
carry out an environmental impact assessment of the area.  This
study noted the damaged state of the environment but the project
still went ahead.  More importantly, the EBRD did not ask AGRA to
inspect the pipelines which would be used.  AGRA, now under
contract from the World Bank, has surveyed the pipelines and
declared them to be in an appalling state.

"If the EBRD had bothered to look at the faulty pipelines, it
would have seen the state of them and these spills might never
have happened.  But they went ahead and approved a project which
put more pressure on the pipes, and now they are giving the
Russian Government another $24 million loan to clean up the
spill.  Who wins?  Not the Russians."

Greenpeace said that the mutilateral development banks must look
at their lending criteria.  The oil spills in Usinsk and the
recent gas explosion in Ukhta show the state of the
infrastructure.  The banks should concentrate on making the
systems more efficient to conserve energy and stop oil spills and
gas explosions.  In the long term sustainable energy supplies
must come from renewable sources.

"The Russian energy infrastructure is collapsing and it seems
nobody wants to help - they just want to get their oil and go,"
said Horsman.

ENDS

For information: Paul Horsman in Greenpeace Moscow
                 + 7095-9783950 or + 7095-2519073

                 Cindy Baxter in Greenpeace Communications
                 + 44-171-8330600


Video footage and stills available.