Lawns Instead of Dumping Ground? It is Feasible.
The history has been stating for long now: to survive we must convert from cruel masters of the earth – as we have been over quite a few decades – into its friends and allies. First of all, Russian industry should become ecological. However, all too often heads of many companies are reluctant to put it into practice. Nevertheless, socially oriented companies cannot leave the solving of the problem over financial barriers. The young dynamic company RussNeft is one of them.
Performing a major project for production reconstruction and reequipment at its refining subsidiary OAO Orsknefteorgsintez, RussNeft pays much attention to environmental safety. Recultivation of lands at the mine site is a priority of the programme. Amounts of grease clay, black oil wastes have been accumulated at an outskirts polygon. This heritage of the past has been worked on for a few years now. 50 000 tons are whitened and recultivated annually, transforming the wastes into a non-hazardous grade. In this case it is not about the profits of the company but rather about the rehabilitation of the land, which has been used over many years and converted into a dark oil patch by the forerunners. The long-term project is to be fulfilled by 2013. However, even by now there have been visible results. This year alone RussNeft has allocated 13 mln 800 thousand rubles to fulfill the programme. And the sum will amount to 18 mln rubles in 2007.
The project is being performed in cooperation with Ufa scientists, who have elaborated a method of recultivation with the help of bio-organisms. The only disadvantage of the biological method is a thermal regime. Bio-organisms can ‘work’ only at an above-zero temperature; it means that cold weather recultivation has to be ‘frozen’. At the moment RussNeft has proposed another method of recultivation; that of chemical reagents for petroleum products neutralization, which will make it possible not to remove the lands from the site; and dust the spills with chemical constitutions directly on the site instead. And in 16-28 hours, according to method’s developers, the grass will grow on the cleaned ground. Now the economic effect of applying this method is being calculated.
The ‘Production at All Costs’ slogan is in the past. Since RussNeft started Orsk oil refinery management, the introduction of new technologies has been speeded up. There are a lot of plans. At that, the ecological issue is not only being taken into consideration but also focused on.
Oksana RADIONOVA