No excess of petroleum products was found in the Ob waters. This was reported by the press service of the Yamal government on December 23, 2021. The claim is based on research by scientists who took samples in March and August 2021.
According to the press service, the main task of the research is to assess the ecological state of the Ob water, entering by transboundary transport from the territory of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug to Yamal and further to the Ob Bay and the Kara Sea.
They explain that the monitoring was peformed by employees of the Scientific Center for the Study of the Arctic, Tyumen State University and the Institute of Water and Environmental Problems of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Three points of water sampling were selected: in the area of the village Kazym-Mys (the Bolshaya Ob river), the Azov village (the Malaya Ob river) and in the north near the Salemal village (the Khamanelskaya Ob river), in close proximity to the confluence with the Ob Bay.
“The research results have demonstrated a positive dynamics of water quality in the lower reaches of the river. Compared to last year, the content of petroleum products at the mouth of the Ob river has decreased, ” said Andrei Soromotin, director of the Research Institute of Ecology and Rational Use of Natural Resources at Tyumen State University, quoted by the press service of the Yamal government.
According to him, not a single sample was found with an excess of permissible concentrations for petroleum products.
The research was made as part of the project of the West Siberian REC "Ensuring the ecological and biological safety of the Ob-Irtysh river basin". The project involves the creation of a system for monitoring and forecasting the ecological state of the Ob-Irtysh river basin in the Okrug by 2024. The money for the research is provided by the Yamal budget.
Besides, according to scientists, the water that comes from Ugra is dirtier than the one that, passing through the Yamal, enters the Ob Bay. As the press service of the government writes, this is related to the fact that the pollution of the river in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug is not great. “This is due to the low anthropogenic load on the water body in the region, the addition of the waters of the Ural rivers (Synya, Voikar, Sob, etc.) and the processes of self-purification of water,” the official website of the government says.
At the same time, in April 2021, the Yamal prosecutor's office discovered the pollution of the Ob with petroleum products after an accident on the underwater product pipeline of SiburTyumenGaz JSC in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. What is more, the accident took place in March 2021. "On April 24, 2021 next to the village of Gorki of Shuryshkarsky area they recorded signs of pollution of the Bolshaya Ob river with a petroliferous liquid,” the supervisory authority reported.
Source: New Day