The Rivers Ran Black

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No one would ever accuse the former Soviet republics of going overboard on environmental protection. But even by their low standards, the news that began trickling out of Russia last week was appalling. A ruptured pipeline in the northwestern Komi republic has dumped a huge amount of oil onto the Arctic landscape, contaminating wetlands and fouling waterways. An eyewitness reported that on one river the crude has formed a noxious slick measuring six to seven miles long, 14 yards wide and a yard deep. The spill's total volume, say U.S. Department of Energy officials, could be as much as 2 million bbl., some eight times the amount dumped in Alaska by the Exxon Valdez.

Or maybe not. The Russians insist that the real figure is only a one- twentieth as large, and no one has been able to prove them wrong. Bad weather closed area airports for most of last week, while a persistent cloud cover prevented orbiting spy satellites from photographing the spill. But even if the Russian estimates are accurate, says William White, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy, "that's a lot of oil."

In either case, the environmental damage could be devastating. Says Warner Chabot, an official with the Washington-based Center for Marine Conservation: "If the oil enters the Pechora River and flows into the Barents Sea, it will destroy wetlands, salmon runs and breeding grounds for shorebirds." Conditions in the Arctic are so harsh that plants and animals already live on the edge of survival. It can take decades for a tree to grow just a few feet, and tire tracks in tundra vegetation may persist for up to 100 years.

Whatever the volume of escaped petroleum, the spill is just part of a much bigger problem. Russia has more than a million miles of gas and oil pipelines, many of them poorly maintained and some in very bad shape. Every year, up to a fifth of Russia's total oil production is lost -- partly to theft, but much of it through leakage. Komineft, the company whose oil is now polluting the northern terrain, is one of the most consistent offenders. For six years, says Stephen MacSerraigh of the oil industry magazine Nefte Compass, "the Komineft pipelines have averaged about 10 leaks a month. If you fly over them, you constantly see puddles of oil on the ground."

The pipeline that ruptured was evidently the worst of a bad bunch. "It was corroded and had holes all over it," says Mikhail Bernstein, an executive at a construction firm that was hired last August to replace the 19-year-old conduit. Local officials don't disagree. "We all know the pipeline should have been repaired," said Vyacheslav Bibikov, Vice President of the Komi republic, in a testy meeting with reporters last week. "There's no money for it." Rather than stop the flow of oil and lose income, Komineft erected earthworks to contain the gathering crude. When the autumn rains came, the makeshift dikes crumbled, and the oil escaped.