DILAPIDATED PIPELINES SAMOTLOR OIL FIELD - ACTION TOTALFINAELF OIL REFINERY LEUNA, NEWS ACCESS

Leuna, 30.01.2002 The tussle between Greenpeace and the French multinational oil company TotalFinaElf is entering a new round. To coincide with a TotalFinaElf press conference in Paris to present its accounts Greenpeace has today installed a board showing up-to-date interim financial figures for the company in front of its biggest refinery in Leuna. Set in concrete, the board points out that the company's profits have been made at the expense of the environment. Greenpeace's protest is to criticise the fact that despite making enormous profits from oil TotalFinaElf is not spending any money to clean up production areas in Western Siberia contaminated with oil. The refinery at Leuna processes about ten million tonnes of crude oil a year from Russia.
TotalFinaElf continues to expand its oil business in Russia. In a 250 million dollar investment the amount of oil produced per day in the Kharyaga oil field in the Timan-Pechora region north of the Arctic circle is due to be increased by the end of the year from 12,000 to 30,000 barrels. In collaboration Russia's second biggest oil company, Yukos, Total-FinaElf is planning to open up a production area in the Black Sea. At the same time the company wants to acquire a 25 per cent share in the Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea. The investment for this alone is estimated at the order of 20 billion dollars.

30 Jan, 2002

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