AILSA CHANG, HOST:
There is an environmental disaster developing in the Arctic. More than 150,000 barrels of diesel oil from a mining complex spewed into a river in northern Russia late last month. It is the biggest oil spill in the Arctic to date. And now the oil slick is moving towards the Arctic Ocean. NPR international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam reports.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Most Arctic experts agree that the three great concerns for the frozen north are climate change, stranded ships and oil spills.
VICTORIA HERRMANN: To get a response to an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean means that you have to move infrastructure, expertise, ships from more southern ports up to the Arctic.
NORTHAM: Victoria Herrmann is managing director of the Arctic Institute, a research group. She says even once help arrives in this remote, inhospitable region, it’s difficult to work there.
HERRMANN: Currents are changing, and the ice and water shelf are changing. And you have an uncertainty of where sea ice is and how easy it is to get to the spill itself.
For the rest of this interview: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/878852931