MMC Norilsk Nickel’s Vladimir Potanin said it’s impossible to estimate the cost of damages from May’s massive fuel spill in the Arctic until the miner completes the clean-up, which may extend into next year.
Nornickel has set aside $2.1-billion after Russia’s ecological watchdog asked it to pay for the damage caused by the spill of about 150 000 barrels of diesel from a storage tank into a river system. The miner is challenging the size of the fine, saying the watchdog used the highest damage coefficient, which assumes the company did nothing to mitigate the impact of the spill. “How much fuel actually is left in the rivers and how much the ecosystem can be restored – that still has to be assessed,” billionaire CEO Potanin said in interview near Moscow.