Fiery Blast Is Just Another Pipeline Leak to Russian Officials

An explosion in a high-pressure natural gas pipeline that rocketed a ball of fire almost five miles into the sky was described Thursday by Russian authorities as just another leak in this country’s disintegrating industrial plumbing.

While the high-altitude fireworks prompted a passing Japan Air Lines plane to divert from its flight path, officials with the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations and with the Severgazprom utility in Ukhta, 800 miles northeast of Moscow, shrugged off the accident as a routine event in impoverished Russia.

“This incident seems to have shaken the whole country. We’re getting calls from everywhere,” said Valery V. Igisyan of the emergencies ministry. “But the fire has been put out, and this is basically an everyday trifle with (Severgazprom). Pipelines have a habit of getting old and rusty.”

Indeed, Russia’s crumbling fuel extraction and transport facilities have contributed to a spate of environmental disasters.

An oil spill last summer in the Usinsk region, also in the republic of Komi in the far north, is believed to have been the worst in history, exceeding by as much as sevenfold the 80 million gallons spilled in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in the devastating 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

Maintenance of industrial facilities and efforts to improve safety have traditionally been low priorities in Russia, and the struggling transition out of Communist-era central planning to a market economy has further tightened the investment purse strings, making breakdowns and disasters a regular occurrence.

Thursday’s early-morning pipeline explosion ignited a fire that burned for more than two hours, initially shooting a ball of burning gas as high as 25,000 feet, according to JAL pilot Akira Yamakawa, who told journalists of the stunning blast that he witnessed en route from Frankfurt, Germany, to Narita, Japan, from the Boeing 747 he was flying.

The intensity of the pre-dawn blaze was obvious in Russian television footage that showed high-rise apartment buildings nearly a mile from the accident site blindingly illuminated by the fire’s glow.

Igor Yevseyev, a senior official of the Severgazprom joint-stock company, told an Itar-Tass news agency reporter in Ukhta that the explosion about eight miles south of the city was caused by a spark from friction created by escaping gas after a small section of the five-foot-diameter pipeline “deteriorated.” He described the accident as “nothing out of the ordinary.”

Other Severgazprom officials said exports will not be affected. Russia supplies about 30% of Western Europe’s natural gas.

The blast destroyed 66 feet of the pipeline and left a crater nearly 20 feet deep and 50 feet wide, Russian state television reported.

While officials sought to downplay consequences of the accident, Greenpeace-Russia warned in a statement from Moscow that as much as 8,000 tons of gas may have been released into the atmosphere.

Gas flow along the pipeline from Ukhta to Torzhok, about 140 miles northwest of Moscow, was interrupted for six hours while emergency workers contained the fire and cut off the broken section by closing valves. Damage to the pipeline has been estimated at 200 million rubles, or about $40,000.