Greenpeace Protests Russian Oil
Copyright © 2000 The Associated Press
September 8, 2000
MOSCOW (AP) - Greenpeace activists smeared themselves with crude oil Friday and dumped buckets of the sticky substance in front of a Russian government building to protest oil spills in Siberia.
Greenpeace had collected the oil in buckets from a spill site in the Siberian wilderness, and activists slopped down the gunk, mixed with bits of grass and twigs, onto a tarp in front of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy building in central Moscow.
Some scooped up the oil, which looked like thick chocolate pudding, and smeared it on their white overalls. Several dozen activists took part in the protest.
Russia is the world's third largest oil-exporting nation after Saudi Arabia and Norway, and it has tried to step up production to capitalize on high world oil prices this year. High oil prices have helped the economy pull out of a decade-long free-fall.
But Soviet-era wells and pipelines are aging and often in need of repair. The World Bank has estimated that 74,000 acres of wilderness are contaminated by oil spills each year in Russia, a Greenpeace spokesman said.
Greenpeace estimates that 70 to 140 million barrels leak each year. Government leak estimates are closer to 2 million barrels per year.