Natural Gas – Connect Russia

Russia groans under the weight of its rubbish

Landfill areas in Russia are bigger than some countries and authorities call for more recycling and tougher action against pollution.

With more than 2,000 square km of rubbish and solid waste rotting across Russia, the total area is six times the size of Malta.

Only 30 per cent of Russia’s waste is recycled properly, leading to 80 billion tons being dumped across the country.

The volume increases by 7 billion tons each year, the Federation Council’s first vice-speaker Alexander Torshin said at a national ecological forum, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported.

Vladimir Putin has also warned that the authorities need to act if they want to change the ecological situation in the country.

The Prime Minister said that about 15 per cent of Russian territory is in poor ecological condition, Interfax reported.

“In almost all of the country’s regions air and water pollution remain high,” Putin said at a meeting devoted to improving Russia’s ecology.

Federation Council first vice-speaker Alexander Torshin suggests that in the coming years we will begin mining trash piles for secondary resources (he continues to suggest that this could rival Gas/Oil as a source of resources/wealth)

(Via Johnson’s Russia List)

Russia employs Arctic brigade to defend oil and gas reserves

The move follows a muscular series of comments from the deputy head of Russia’s Border Service Colonel-General Vycheslav Dorokhin who said the Kremlin planned to build up its forces in the region to better patrol its Arctic territorial waters.

The troops will be based in the far northern town of Pechenga on Russia’s Kola Peninsula close to the Norwegian and Finnish borders and will be combat-ready later this year.

Russian military planners said they had studied the way Arctic troops in Norway and Finland operated and had ordered in the necessary winterised clothing and arms for the new brigade which could number up to 8,000 troops.

In particular, he said Russia wanted to step up patrols of the strategically important North East shipping passage.

“Our potential there will be built up. We won’t let anyone feel themselves free (to move about as they please) in the Arctic.”

Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway are all locked in a race to grab a slice of the northern wilderness after US researchers predicted that global warming might leave the area ice-free, and therefore more easily navigable and explored, as early as 2030.

Experts say the region potentially contains one fifth of the world’s oil and gas reserves and that the swath of Arctic territory claimed specifically by Russia could be home to oil supplies double the size of Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves.

(Via The Telegraph; by the interesting journalist Andrew Osborn)