Rosneft Reports Large Oil Spill on Sakhalin Island
Russian oil producer Rosneft said on Thursday that around 15 tonnes (110 barrels) of oil spilled off from an idled pipeline on the Pacific island of Sakhalin, while local ecologists say the scale of disaster is far larger. Rosneft said the spill occurred on Wednesday at the Ekhabi oilfield in northern Sakhalin. The company decided to burn the spilled oil to "minimise ecological damage". Dmitry Lisitsin, an activist at a local ecological watchdog in Sakhalin, estimated the size of the spill at about 300 tonnes. "They started to burn the spilled oil, people see massive plumes of black smoke," he said by phone from Sakhalin. "This is a large spill, and the problem is of a systemic nature," said Vladimir Chuprov from Greenpeace.
Latest on Greenpeace Arctic Protest Aftermath
Russia boycotts ITLOS arbitration concerning their siezure of the Dutch-flagged 'Arctic Sunrise', and Greenpeace responds to reports that piracy charges against the 30 held in custody were to be replaced by that of 'hooliganism'. The Russian Foreign Ministry has announced that it will not accept an international arbitration process at which the Netherlands is seeking the release of the Greenpeace International ship Arctic Sunrise and its crew. It also said it plans not to attend the hearing at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). According to Greenpeace, the Ministry did, however, say that at the same time Russia remains open to settling the situation. “The Arctic 30 are no more hooligans than they were pirates.
