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thrown into the spotlight when flooding caused an aging oil gathering
pipeline to fail just outside the city limits. As Yuganskneftegaz launched
a cleanup effort, residents documented the incident on social media:
News stories about the leak were accompanied by crowdsourced images
of brownish-black water pouring out of bathroom faucets and patches of
oil spreading out over the surface of the nearby Ob River.
The exact extent of the damage isn’t quite clear yet. An early estimate
by Russian Natural Resources Minister Sergey Donskoy placed the
affected area at somewhere between 500 and 800 square meters, but in a
statement to the press he acknowledged that the damage could turn out
to be more extensive due to the flooding. But what is clear is that the
oil and gas industry is facing a problem – and it’s a problem that affects
the industry on a truly global scale, from Siberia to Abu Dhabi to North
America.
The world’s midstream gathering pipelines are getting older. And
in order to prevent even more incidents like the Nefteyugansk leak, all