The Save Pechora Committee stated that the authorities had withheld the impact of the oil spill in the Kolva river

The Save Pechora Committee has filed a complaint to the Prosecutor's office of the Komi Republic because of the oil spill in the Kolva river. Environmentalists are referring to the data of the Meteorological Office: its water sample analysis has indicated that the oil products that got into the river reached the village of Kolva, located 200 km from the accident site down the river and 8 km from Usinsk. Ivan Ivanov, the Chairman of the Save Pechora Committee, reported this. Earlier, the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage and the Usinsk Town Administration stated that the LUKOIL Company had managed to stop the slick significantly higher up the river, 40 km away from the spill area.

The petroleum products spill into the Kolva river near Kharyaginsky Oil Field in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug was recorded in the evening of October 17. According to the LUKOIL Company, the leak occurred due to the inactive oil pipeline's depressurization which resulted into 0.9 tons of floating oil getting into the river. Oilfield workers installed four boom containments in the Kolva: one — in the accident area and three — at the lines of 16 km, 40 km, and 85 km down the river from the spill area. Later, two more booms were installed as a" backup".

On October 18, the Usinsk Town Administration imposed a regime of emergency and reported a day after that "the iridescent film outside the fourth line of booms was not observed." Later, Svetlana Radionova, the head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage, confirmed that the slick had not got through the fourth boom containment, but noted that the content of water pollutants had exceeded the MPC: "They are not thousandths, but still there are some."

The Save Pechora Committee first criticized local officials who had officially announced the regime of emergency’s imposition only 15 hours after the accident had been reported. Then social activists voiced doubts about the official information. In their opinion, the volume of petroleum products that leaked into the river reported by LUKOIL does not fit the scale of the slick observed in the Kolva.

On October 27, the LUKOIL Company announced the completion of "the floating oil leak cleanup activities" on the Kolva river.

Ivan Ivanov published the official response of the Komi Republican Center on Hydrometeorology and Monitoring of the Environment, which has a water gauge post in the village of Kolva. The analysis of the Kolva river’s water samples taken at this post has indicated that a three-fold excess of the MPC for petroleum products for fisheries (0.15 mg/dm3 with an MPC of 0.05 mg/dm3) was recorded on October 22.

Ivanov assumed that the whole point of LUKOIL's damage control was to remove the visible iridescent film from the river’s surface. However, when water is cold, oil tends to accumulate in storage zones and benthal deposits, rather than spread over the water surface, thereby causing secondary water pollution.

"Will LUKOIL be able to do something about petroleum cuts that have formed an emulsion with water? No, nothing and never,” says Ivanov. “Will LUKOIL be able to do something about the bottom sediment? Theoretically, it will, but most likely it will not do anything, because troubling bed silts will again cause the formation of a visible „ iridescent film“ on the water. Will LUKOIL be able to collect the oil that has stuck to the lower surface of the ice that forms the sludge? Unlikely, and what for? It will float away anyway."

The Chairman of the Save Pechora Committee asked for the results of water sample analysis of the republican Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage and the Ministry of Natural Resources. Ivanov also filed a complaint with the Komi Prosecutor's office, considering that the authorities violated the rights of local residents to truth about the environmental conditions and the security measures taken. He also promised to appeal to the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision and the Investigative Committee similarly.

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