Russian fisheries agency seeks $800 mln from Nornickel over fuel spill

The spill in Norilsk, an industrial city in the Arctic Circle, was Russia's worst environmental disaster in the Arctic this century, environmentalists say. Announcing that it had filed the claim for damages, the Rosrybolovstvo fisheries agency said in a statement that the spill had polluted lakes, and rivers leading to the Kara Sea. It put the cost of work to restore aquatic bioresources at more than 55 billion roubles and estimated direct damage caused by death of fish at 3.6 billion roubles. The agency said last year the rivers and lakes would take 18 years to recover.


Reuters | Moscow | Updated: 29-07-2021 22:01 IST | Created: 29-07-2021 21:59 IST
Russian fisheries agency seeks $800 mln from Nornickel over fuel spill
Representative Image Image Credit: ANI
  • Country:
  • Russian Federation

Russia's state fisheries agency has filed a claim for 58.7 billion roubles ($801 million) in damages from Nornickel over an Arctic fuel spill, an amount the metal producer said it would challenge.

Nornickel, the world's leading nickel and palladium producer, has already paid $2 billion for environmental damage from the leak of 21,000 tonnes of diesel into rivers and subsoil from a storage tank at its power plant in Norilsk in May 2020. The spill in Norilsk, an industrial city in the Arctic Circle, was Russia's worst environmental disaster in the Arctic this century, environmentalists say.

Announcing that it had filed the claim for damages, the Rosrybolovstvo fisheries agency said in a statement that the spill had polluted lakes, and rivers leading to the Kara Sea. It put the cost of work to restore aquatic bioresources at more than 55 billion roubles and estimated direct damage caused by death of fish at 3.6 billion roubles.

The agency said last year the rivers and lakes would take 18 years to recover. Nornickel said Rosrybolovstvo's damages claim was unreasonably overstated and that it would challenge both the claim and the methodology used for its calculation in court.

The estimate of the damage "is many times higher than results of calculations made by specialised scientific institutions to assess the impact of the spill on aquatic bioresources," Nornickel said in a statement. Nornickel said the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated direct damage to the Doldykan and Ambarnaya rivers and the Pyasino Lake was between 1.9 million and 52.1 million roubles, depending on the basis for the calculations.

Nornickel did not disclose its estimate of costs for restoration of bioresources in the area. ($1 = 73.2690 roubles)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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