Turning “green” with eco problems in Russia

Intensive development of Russia’s port and offshore infrastructure stirs up environmental issues. The experts and market participants believe it is necessary to improve the legislation dealing with the responce to emergency oil spills, responsibility of owners of neglected vessels, ecological expertise etc.

“Hot” garbage

As it is well known, Russia is busy today with the development of the Arctic which is rich in hydrocarbons and is interesting as a transit region. However, to succeed in its development we should deal with the ecological problems which have been accumulating for decades. 

As Aleksey Tyukavin, first deputy to the Murmansk Region Governor, said at the 5th International Ecology Forum, there are almost no undamaged ecosystems along the Murmansk bay coast. The ecology is damaged by unauthorised discharges, neglected military bases and vessels. Neglected vessels pollute the water area with heavy metals the concentration of which in certain places exceeds the norm by several times.

The cleaning of the water area is complicated because it is the federal property. Meanwhile, the federal special-purpose programme responsible for financing of the required activities has not been approved. Besides, the legislation does not imply any punishment for the owners of the neglected property.  So the Government has no instruments to prevent the appearance of such scrap grounds. 
The problem is aggravated with the low price of scrap metal – it is not easy today to attract business to utilization of abandoned vessels. According to the Deputy Governor, it is necessary to introduce amendments into the legislation providing for mechanisms of private-public partnership to be applied for disposal if scrap accumulated in the sea. Besides, business units should become responsible for creation of “burial grounds” for vessels.
Otherwise, the Kola Bay may become a “hot point” for the entire of the Barents Sea.
The problem of abandoned vessels is not the feature of the Murmansk Region alone. The same problem was announced by the representative of the Legislative Assembly of the Kamchatka Territory when he spoke at the Forum about the Kamchatka region. So this issue should be handled at the federal level, representatives of the regional governments believe.

Environmental threat

There is an environmental threat for both the sea and the inland waters. According to Veronika Tarbayeva, Chairman of the Committee on Environmental Education and Relations with Civil Society (Council of Partners of the St Petersburg Initiative under RF Ministry of Natural Resources), a number of experts call on ban for tankers in the Neva river as there are plenty of protected environmental zones along it. She says the Leningrad Region has no Oil Spill Response Plan while municipalities get only RUB 200,000 per year for those purposes. The exercises are held only once for two years. Veronika Tarbayeva thinks there should be an order of RF Government to specify the requirements for OSR plans. Besides, it is necessary to establish a trust fund growing with the charges collected from each tonne of handled oil product. Moreover, teams of volunteers are to be arranged in preparation for possible oil spills.

In the opinion of Maksim Degtyarev, representative of LUKOIL-BUNKER LLC, who also spoke at the Forum, the existing OSR legislation does not take into account specific features of bunkering companies and deals only with large oil projects. It is quite difficult to obtain state environmental approval, Maksim Degtyarev said. However, his company managed to obtain it. The legislation requires improvement, the representative of the bunkering company says.

According to the calculations of the Central Marine Research and Design Institute (CNIIMF) announced at the Forum by Aleksey Ivanchin, research scientist of CNIIMF, risk of accidental oil spill in the Gulf of Finland is 0.004%, or 1 case for 100 years. The amount of spilt product can vary between 500 and 1,500 t. Emergency rescue teams of Russia can collect up to 5,000 t of oily mixture in case of accidental oil spill. CNIIMF says the Baltic Basin is the most equipped one in terms of oil spill response. If its team & emergency equipment is taken as 100%, the level at the western region of the Arctic is estimated at 40%, eastern region - 2%, Far East Basin – 25%, Caspian –30%.

Vitaly Chernov