After 15 hours on the platform of Prirazlomnaya in the Pechora Sea, six activists of Greenpeace International, among which there was the executive director of Greenpeace International Kumi Naidoo, left the walls of the drill on their own free will.
The staff of Prirazlomnaya was constantly pouring with water on the environmentalists from fire hoses, forcing them down. To reduce the risk of complications in the arctic weather, the activists decided to leave the rig.
OOO Gazprom Neft Shelf owns the license to develop the Prirazlomnoye oil field, which was discovered in 1989 on the Pechora Sea. The extractable oil reserves amount to more than 70 million tons. The designed level of oil production is about 6 million tons of oil.
All the manufacturing operations at the field will be provided by offshore ice-resistant stationary platform (MISP) Prirazlomnaya, which is built by JSC Sevmash . In August 2011, the platform was towed from the scene of completion in Murmansk and installed at the oil field Prirazlomnoye.
Early in the morning of August 24 the mountain climbers from the USA, Canada, Germany and Finland came to Prirazlomnaya by motor boats and went up to the platform on the mooring line. Their demand was to stop drilling in the Arctic.
In the documentation necessary for launching the platform (EIA) it is stated that the probability of a terrorist threat is very low, because the object is far away from any infrastructure. In reality, the platform was not ready for the visit of the «guests.»
The term of the oil spill response plan, adopted in 2007 by the operator of Prirazlomnaya, expired in July 2012, and a «corrected (revised) plan,» as stated in the letter of the Emergency Ministry, «has not been submitted» to the Ministry.
The conditions for drilling in the Arctic are not just difficult, but extreme. The area of the sea, where the Prirazlomnaya platform is located, is covered by a thick layer of ice most time of the year, and the temperatures often drop to -50 ˚ C. Add to that strong storms and months of absolute darkness. It will be impossible to completely eliminate the effects of the disaster here: there is no technology in the world to effectively clean up an oil spill in Arctic conditions. Gazprom Neft Shelf, for example, relies on standard methods: the list of equipment to clean the shores issued by the operator of Prirazlomnaya includes, among other things, shovels and buckets. And the nearest rescue station platform is 1,000 kilometers away, in Murmansk.
Assessing the scenarios of oil spread in case of a possible spill on Prirazlomnaya, the specialists of the Information Risk Center and the environmentalists from Greenpeace and WWF Russia have concluded that the harsh conditions and contingency plan, which does not comply with them, will not allow the operator of the Prirazlomnaya platform to effectively reverse the effects of the oil spill. This will lead to serious pollution of the coast and the coastal protected areas. The risk zone includes the water area of over 140,000 square kilometers.
Метки: Greenpeace International, oil, oil production, Prirazlomnaya drilling platform, Газпром нефть шельф
