Climate Change Contributed to Norilsk Diesel Spill

Melting permafrost is believed to have caused one of the worst oil spills in Arctic history, after a diesel fuel reservoir at a power plant outside the Krasnoyarsk region city of Norilsk collapsed on Friday 29 May, according to the Moscow Times.

«It appears that melting permafrost caused this tragedy,” Sergei Shakhmatov, former deputy ecological minister for Krasnoyarsk and director of Russia’s Greens Party, told the paper by phone after touring the site of the spill last Thursday. 

On Thursday, Russia’s environmental watchdog said 15,000 tons of diesel fuel were released into the Ambarnaya River and 6,000 into the surrounding soil. 

For Russia, thawing permafrost due to climate change poses a grave risk, as much of the infrastructure for extracting the resources that drive the country’s economy sits atop the permafrost that covers two-thirds of the country.