#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The settlement agreement between the Yenisei Territorial Administration of the Federal Agency for Fishery (Rosrybolovstvo) and the Norilsk-Taimyr Energy Company (NTEK) was approved by the Arbitration Court of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
NTEK supported the Rosrybolovstvo’s head Ilya Shestakov’s initiative in September 2021, who proposed the settlement agreement. According to the Nornickel’s press service, under the terms, NTEK must fully compensate for the damage to Taimyr aquatic bioresources affected by the 2020 accident. Various valuable fish species must be released into the Norilo-Pyasinsky lake-river system’s reservoirs: sturgeon, muksun, cir, sig and nelma. The release is scheduled for 2033–2050, and the company plans to release juvenile Siberian sturgeon into the Yenisei every year, starting in 2023.
“In-kind compensation is best suited to the immediate restoration of aquatic bioresources’ disturbed state and the environmental situation’s improvement in the Norilsk industrial district”, said the Nornickel’s press service.
In addition, the Company undertook to finance scientific research by the Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) to assess the aquatic biological resources’ state and their habitat planned for the period from 2023 to 2051.
Compensation for harm to aquatic biological resources is the last, final stage to eliminate the consequences of the accident that occurred in 2020 in Norilsk, which is carried out by Nornickel. It is assumed that the aquatic biological resources’ state will be fully restored after the implementation of all the measures specified in the settlement agreement. Going forward, it will need to be maintained at levels that will maximize sustainable production and biodiversity.
The Nornickel provided the Federal Agency for Fishery with a guarantee to ensure the obligations’ fulfillment under the settlement agreement to guarantee timely and full compensation for damage to aquatic biological resources
Let us remind that on August 3, 2021, the Arbitration Court accepted the claim of the Federal Agency for Fishery against Nornickel’s subsidiary NTEK on compensation for damage to fish resources caused by an accident with a diesel fuel spill at an emergency fuel storage facility at CHPP No. 3 in Norilsk in 2020. The claim amounted to 58.65 billion rubles, and later, on April 15, 2022, the court increased the amount by another 311 million.
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Text: Angelica Stepanova
