Kolva River Oil Spill in Russia

An indigenous community member cleans up an oil spill in the Kolva River. Local people and their children ventured out into the toxic rivers in their own small boats to clean the collected oil from the river with their own hands. Many of them had barely anything to protect themselves from the oil.

Unique identifier: GP04P6M

Type: Image

Shoot date: 02/06/2013

Locations: Eastern Europe, Kolva River, Komi Republic, Russia

Credit line: © Ivan Ivanov / Greenpeace

Ranking: ★★★★★★ (B)

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Kolva River Oil Spill in Russia

Indigenous community members clean up an oil spill in the Kolva River, Komi Republic, Northern Russia. The Indigenous communities told Greenpeace that the oil has spread over 170km of the Pechora and Kolva rivers. The amount of oil in the river is unknown, but locals estimate it's at least 100 tonnes. This appears to be another significant spill for the Indigenous communities in an area that has been blighted with the impacts of a reckless and negligent oil industry for many years. Joint ventures between Russian oil companies and foreign interests are becoming increasingly common, as are the spills. Both Rusvietpetro and the government have failed to cope with even this relatively small spill, despite the infrastructure available to them and the fact that the accident is easily accessible. Greenpeace fears a bigger accident, or an accident on the Arctic shelf hundreds of miles away from civilization.

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