Explosion at gunpowder factory near Ryazan killed 17 people | Russia and Russians: A View from Europe | DW

A powerful explosion thundered on the territory of a gunpowder workshop in the Shilovsky district of the Ryazan region on the morning of Friday, October 22. 16 people were fatally injured, said Aleksey Kuznetsov, Assistant Minister of Health of the Russian Federation. Another seriously injured person later died in hospital.

According to the head of the administration of the Shilovsky district of the Ryazan region, Vladimir Lukantsov, at the time of the fire there were 17 people in the shop of the plant.

The incident occurred on the territory of one of the workshops of the FSUE “Elastic”. Among the main versions of what happened is a violation of technological processes, which led to a fire, the Ministry of Emergency Situations said.

A significant force of firefighters was dispatched to the site. At the moment, the fire has been localized, 170 people and 50 pieces of equipment were involved in extinguishing it. According to preliminary data from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, there is no threat to the population. At the moment, rescuers are dismantling the rubble after the elimination of open burning at the powder factory.

See also:

• Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  Oil pipeline customers – five EU countries

  Oil is Russia’s main export commodity. The main sales market for the Russian Federation is the European Union. The most important onshore supply channel to the EU is the Druzhba pipeline system. The USSR built it in the 1960s to provide fuel to the socialist countries. Today, the northern branch supplies Poland and Germany, and the smaller southern branch supplies Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Pictured: the reservoirs of the Sazhalombatta refinery near Budapest.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  April 19: Belarus sounds the alarm

  The key transit country for Druzhba is Belarus: near the town of Mozyr, oil coming from Russia is distributed to the northern and southern branches. On April 19, 2019, the Belarusian state concern Belneftekhim declares that the quality of the Russian export mixture Urals has sharply deteriorated in recent days. The content of organochlorine in it is tens of times higher than the norm: 150-300 ppm instead of the maximum allowable 10 ppm.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  April 24-25: oil pipeline paralyzed

  Poland and then Belarus stop Druzhba on April 24, a day later Ukraine stops transit on the southern branch. Goods from Russia are contaminated with dichloroethane. This substance is used to increase the output of depleting fields, but then it must be separated from the produced oil. Experts admit that about a monthly volume of pumping has been spoiled – up to 5 million tons or 37 million barrels.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  Threat to metal and people

  Dichloroethane is a poisonous and corrosive substance. Turning into hydrochloric acid, it corrodes the walls of pipelines, tanks, railway tanks, especially if there is a lot of water in the oil. But it poses the main threat at high temperatures to alloy steel used in refinery equipment. And if chlorides get into gasoline, it leads to the destruction of engines.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  Triple damage for Belarus

  President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko begins to demand compensation from Russia. For a relatively weak Belarusian economy, pollution and simple “Friendship” means triple damage. The country is losing as a transit country, due to a lack of high-quality raw materials, two of its refineries are working half-heartedly and stop exporting oil products, besides, the Mozyr Oil Refinery claims a breakdown of part of the equipment.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  Transneft blames scammers

  Who is to blame for everything? Fraudsters in the Samara region, Russian President Vladimir Putin assures on April 30, his longtime friend in the Dresden KGB residency Nikolai Tokarev, who has been heading Transneft since 2007, the state-owned monopoly operator of Russian oil pipelines. But the question arises: how could a few small private firms spoil such an amount of oil?

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  In Ust-Luga, chlorides get into tankers

  In Russia, dirty raw materials end up not only in the Druzhba pipeline. From there, it enters the Baltic Pipeline System-2 and through it reaches the export oil terminal of the port of Ust-Luga. There, oil with organochlorine is poured into tankers and sent to EU countries, but European buyers refuse to take it. There are reports that China is ready to accept it.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  How Much Damaged the Leune Refinery?

  Traditionally, Druzhba’s largest clients are two refineries in East Germany, the former GDR. The French concern Total has been hiding for a long time that dirty oil got to its plant in Leune, and only on May 17 admits that it has suspended the operation of a number of installations “for technical verification.” And on May 29, it turns out that the enterprise is forced to work at half of its capacity due to the interrupted supply of “Druzhba”.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  Igor Sechin demands compensation

  Druzhba’s second East German client is the PCK refinery in Schwedt. Its co-owners, the Russian state-owned company Rosneft and the British-Dutch concern Shell, are silent about the losses of the plant, which found itself without deliveries via Druzhba for 7 weeks. But the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, at the end of May wrote a letter to the Russian government, demanding, as an exporter and consignee, to put pressure on Transneft in the matter of compensation.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  Partial resumption of supplies

  On June 9, clean oil is transported from Belarus to Poland via the main northern branch of Druzhba, and then reaches Germany. Prior to that, transit through Ukraine to Slovakia (May 23), the Czech Republic (May 27) and Hungary (May 29) is being restored. While the cleaned lines of the oil pipeline system again begin to flow conditioned raw materials, others, parallel ones, are still clogged with organochlorine.

• 

  Pollution of “Friendship” – the largest emergency in the history of the oil industry in Russia

  Belneftekhim is authorized to inform

  Belarus intends to return all dirty oil to Russia by the end of summer, where it is mixed with clean oil. Of the initial 1.3 million tons, about 760,000 tons remain in pipes and tanks in the country, Belneftekhim reported on June 11. It was this Belarusian state concern that became the main source of reliable information about the consequences of the largest emergency in the history of the Russian oil industry.

  Author: Andrey Gurkov

.