Another large oil spill was reported Monday in the Russian arctic, and the environmental group Greenpeace that sounded the alarm blamed the oil industry and the government for allowing it to happen and failing to clean it up.
"It's a huge disaster," said Paul Horsman, the Greenpeace campaigner who returned to Moscow from the northern Russian town of Usinsk in the Komi region with video proof of what he said is industry and government irresponsibility in handling an environmental catastrophe.Even as local newscasts in Moscow broadcast Greenpeace videos of the new spill - which reportedly spewed 13,000 tons of crude onto the tundra and into rivers and streams - Russian industry and government officials denied any knowledge of it.
The Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Emergency Situations said they had no information on the latest pipeline leak in Komi.
While footage of flaming oil and huge billowing black clouds rising over the Russian tundra appeared on TV, an official at Rossneft, the Russian oil industry association connected with the Energy Ministry, said the organization was unaware of the incident and said that if a new spill had occurred, it would be the first to know.
While Horsman pointed at Russian government and industry neglect, he stressed that Western oil companies shared responsibility for the accident because of their partnership in pumping Russian oil through a faulty pipeline.
"Western oil companies cannot wash their hands of responsibility," Horsman said, naming British Gas, Gulf Canada and Conoco, along with Komineft (Komi oil) for refusing to halt the flow of oil through a leaky pipeline that already had spewed thousands of tons of oil onto the tundra before springing new leaks over the weekend.
Horsman further blamed the Russian oil industry's international financial benefactors, including the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for failing to make environmentally safe production a condition of lending the industry money.