To find out how to turn off your ad blocker, click here.
If this is your first time registering, check your inbox to learn more about the benefits of your Forbes account and what you can do next.
Billionaire Vladimir Potanin just wants to live a quiet life. But when his Norilsk Nickel apple spewed more than 20,000 tons of diesel into the Arctic, Russian environmentalists hurt. Now they’re calling him. They prefer to take over Russia’s worst oil spills.
“We are convinced that this turn of fate occurred due to poor control of defense and environmental risks. That’s why we sent an open letter to Potanin about this,” says Alexey Knizhnikov, head of WWF Russia’s industrial withdrawal program in Moscow.
Nornickel’s stock has been in decline ever since. The combined apple is the world’s largest manufacturer of palladium and nickel and the world’s leading manufacturer of platinum and copper.
Journalists from the 100 Media Union said that in 3 parties local police had tried to arrest the dogs of Novaya Gazeta newspapers according to those who had come to Norilsk to report on the may 2 ecological disaster.
What happened?
Damage to a diesel-fuel garage tank caused a fuel leak at Nornickel’s No. 3 thermal and tool plant (HPP-3) in the Kayerkan district of Norilsk city, spilling more than 20,000 tons of diesel fuel into the ambarnaya river meadows. and maybe some stations transported from the river to Lake Pyasino. The twist of fate caused by a station of sudden collapses and supports holding a fuel garage tank that was released from the destination for more than 30 years.
A total of more than 33 kilotons of water and fuel aggregate collected in the region, adding permafrost near the Arctic, with more than 172 kilotons of infected land removed. According to the company, about 90% of the fuel has been collected and evacuated to date.
You never know if all this will succeed in the Arctic Ocean.
“Potanin to hide the true magnitude of the tragedy. The guilty government under its control is intentionally stifling the authenticity that the pollutant is moving north,” Moscow hydrogeologist Georgy Kavanosyan wrote after visiting the spill. “Potanin to reduce the duration of the disaster.”
Right now, Potanin’s downstairs. No Apple member compadre submitted a request for comment on WWF’s efforts to blame Russia’s richest business for the accident.
Here is a component of the WWF letter to the billionaire:
“We believe that during this situation, you and control of the combined apple will have to assume the full duty of the environmental crisis that occurred while obtaining a full diversity of emergency measures to eliminate the damage and save similar conditions at The expense of Norilsk Nickel.
First, we expect a maximum opening position and dissatisfaction on the reasons and consequences of the rotation of fate and the movements taken. In the first few days after the turn of fate, we watched a check out and hid what had happened. WWF-Russia experts, having gained dissatisfaction at the point of the turn of social media destination, had to interfere and shape the maritime rescue service.
Such a secret, the source of false information, is unacceptable. »»
WWF, Greenpeace and others said Nornickel remained silent for too long about the crisis, a crisis they directly compare to the Exxon Valdez spilled in Alaska in the 1990s.
The turn of fate did not come public until two days after the incident, when photographs of the crisis went viral on social media.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a state of emergency and ordered a large-scale cleanup operation.
Greenpeace stipulates the environmental damage to the Russian Arctic marine ecoformula at $1.4 billion. Biodiversity in Arctic waters will take 10 years to return to its pre-shock level, Russian environmental intellectual officials said. The fragile ecoformula is home to giant apple species that would only be seen in the Russian Arctic, leading some alarming environmentalists to call it “the worst environmental crisis in Arctic history.”
Nornickel blamed thawing permafrost for the tank implosion. WWF accuses Nornickel management and Potanin himself of using global warming to avoid punishment for the company’s ageing infrastructure, and hide from potential gross negligence and mismanagement. Some workers were fired last month over a separate issue from the original spill, but related to its clean-up effort.
Observers say the aging infrastructure of the Soviet era has exceeded its security of use for several years. Researchers found that the collapsed tank was built in the 1980s and probably never updated. Officially, the defective tank was desmissioned in 2016 and was due to a $2 million renovation, but it was still in use and here we are today.
The board has raised this aging apparatus thing in the past, but there’s no movement in this thing, according to a quote from the Financial Times.
“What Norilsk did … is what all Russian corporations with former Soviet assets do. They don’t invest in modernization,” Evgebig apple Shwartz, former head of conservation policy at WWF and independent director of Norilsk, told the Financial Times, Evgebig apple Shwartz. .
Since then, the Russian government has announced an investigation of criminals, and Putin has uttered harsh words about how the combined apple dealt with the disaster. But that’s the point of wear so far, leading some to claim that Potanin ran off with a pat on his wrist.
Five-year-old Potanin charges about $20 billion and is ranked as the 41st richest man in the world. He has been the lead man at Norilsk Nickel for almost five years.
For Russian observers and investors, Potanine former Russian oligarchs with close ties to the circle of relatives of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Putin.
In the 1990s, he held various high-level positions in the Russian government. He was another American behind the so-called “capital loan” policy of privatising state assets after the Soviet Union. He used the policy to download Nornickel for approximately $170 million, an apple that changed and became a $50 billion metal giant.
Looking at the business world, Potanin is one of the main sponsors of the “Night Hockey League” founded through Putin. He also plays hockey with Putin, and from time to time, and the country’s most influential business leaders with Putin’s ears.
This is never the first time Nornickel has realized a foreign intellectual scandal.
In 2016, the company’s Nadezhda plant leaked several tons of iron salts into the Daldykan River near Norilsk turning its waters bright red.
The shots went viral on Russian social media and were taken through a big Apple broker that we go around the world. For several days, Nornickel denied the big fault for the apple, but admitted that his plant had sent iron manure to the waterway.
According to Nornickel’s employees, Potanin has not been a figure in Norilsk for years. Instead, he manages it from Moscow or from his home on the French Riviera, where he spends a wonderful variety of time.
On July 2, the compabig apple announced that seven-year veteran Andrey Bougrov would now oversee Nornickel’s continued progression efforts.
Bougrov has considerable experience in dealing with ESG matters and is positioned to coordinate activities across the various stakeholder groups who invest in Norilsk for its environmental and governance policies.
European funds, in particular, are very attached to this and, therefore, the spill is a possible loss of lead for the apple that attracts Europe’s enlightened capitalists.
Bougrov said Nornickel plans to enhance his cooperation with Russian and foreign researchers and specialized organizations focused on Arctic ecology and permafrost spaces to jointly study permafrost environments and locate responses to advertising security in the region.
“Our joint efforts will provide us with the ultimate complex solutions, while contributing to the safety of the Arctic,” he says.
Forbes reporter David Dawkins, who covers billionaires for the mag and his website, estimated that the crisis may also charge Potanin up to $4 billion.
Potanin owns about 3% of the company’s shares, shares that were reveled in a drop of about 17% in the last four weeks, while Russian shares remain at least 1%.
Much of his song comes from the dividends he receives from Norilsk Nickel, which some shareholders say would have been greater if he had reinvested the split effects on the company.
For some shots of the collapsed tank and spillage, see Novaya Gazeta your Russian skills:
I spent 20 years as a journalist for top productive in the industry, adding as a member of the staff founded in Brazil for WSJ. Since 2011, I have focused on business and making an investment in the