Word: spill
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pollution, like the recent oil spill in Russia, and the threat of global climate change have rudely reminded nations that fossil fuels carry with them heavy costs even when the purchase price is low. In the developing world, alternative forms of energy enjoy increasing cachet as governments wonder how to provide power for billions of people who lack electricity, knowing full / well that cities such as New Delhi, Beijing and Mexico City are choking under blankets of smog. Most important of all: renewables are beginning to earn respect in the marketplace. During the past decade, improvements in technology and manufacturing...
...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...
...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...
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...
News of the spill was contained much more effectively than the oil. It wasn't until weeks later, when an American oil-company worker was brought in to consult on the cleanup, that the rest of the world learned what had happened. The U.S., Germany and Denmark have offered to help, but by week's end the Russians had not responded. To hear Bibikov talk, they won't have to. He claims that the oil fouled only a few miles of the nearby Kolva River and that the water has been 90% cleaned up. The remaining oil, he says, covers...