On February 25, an explosion in the Severnaya coal mine, in Vorkuta, left four people dead and twenty-six stranded some eight hundred meters below the surface; another explosion, three days later, killed six rescue workers and condemned to death the miners in the inaccessible shaft. A Russian government commission investigating the disaster said, on March 6, that they would authorise the flooding of the mine to extinguish the methane-induced fire. They agreed to flooding it with water and figured that it would take sixty to eighty days to extinguish.

The explosion at the Severnaya mine is not unique in mine disasters. There is a long history of mines exploding due to sudden increases in the amount of methane in the air underground. That is why miners have traditionally carried canaries into the mines in the knowledge that poisonous gases like methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide would kill the canaries first; thus giving the miners’ some chance of escape before they too were poisoned.

However, the volume of the methane released in the Severnaya mine was so intense that no canary would have given the miners sufficient warning to escape. Safety procedures in Russian mines have never been adequate or comprehensive. For seven decades at least most of the miners were zeks; prisoners in forced-labour camps. They were expendable. The Russian mineworkers’ unions which were allowed to form outside the closed circle of the ‘official union’ structure have campaigned hard for improvements in mine safety with little governmental or corporate support.

This was only the most recent mine disaster at Vorkuta. In February 2013 nineteen miners died and 3 more were injured in a methane explosion at Vorkutinskaya mine at Vorkuta. The local union (the Russian Independent Coal Employees’ Union (Rosugleprof), were allowed to participate in the commission investigating the disaster. This explosion was also due to methane. On 11 February methane exploded at that mine, also in Vorkuta.. The explosion happened at eight hundred meters from the surface.  Two hundred and fifty-nine miners were present there and twenty-six of them worked in the section where the accident took place. Nineteen miners died and three were injured in the explosion. Rosugeleprof has struggled to improve mine conditions underground in the coal industry and the Miners' and Metallurgical Workers' Union of Russia (MMWU), have struggled in the ore mines of Russia. They have not received a lot of support from the mine owners as they struggle against the decline in prices of primary metals and the government maintains a ‘hands-off’ policy in addressing the claims of workers and their organisations, especially where oligarch-owned mines are involved.

However, the increase in the amount of methane in Russian mines, especially in Western Siberia, is not entirely the result of the adequacy of mine safety provisions, although these are desperately needed. There is a dangerous climactic phenomenon which is releasing subterranean gasses at a prodigious rate.

As a result of global warming vast swathes of marshland in Siberia are starting to emit greenhouse gases thirty times more potent than carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The threat comes from permafrost bogs around the size of mainland France which absorbed carbon dioxide over thousands of years before freezing over during the last Ice Age. Now for the first time in 11,000 years, the thick permafrost under these bogs is beginning to thaw rapidly and form lakes. Temperatures are rising twice the global rate in Russia’s coldest region because of warming, and this is likely to continue in the future, says a leading scientist, Professor Oleg Anisimov, from the State Hydrological Institute in St Petersburg. He said: 'The UN group of climate experts anticipate global temperature increase from two to four degrees Celsius by the end of the century. That is, warming here is two times faster than globally. This is because of the so-called Arctic amplification. There is a reduction in snow and ice cover, which reflect much of the coming sunlight. With less snow and ice, the Arctic gets additional warmth.'[i]

Pictures: Hugues Lantuit/AlfredWegenerInstitut, Mikhail Grigoriev/Permafrost institute

Two-thirds of Russia's landmass lies within a permafrost zone, and warming and thawing of the frozen ground causes problems for infrastructure, such as roads, pipelines, and buildings in the cities. Over the past 20 years many constructions have been damaged due to permafrost degradation. Prof Anisimov said: 'Projected changes in the permafrost seriously threaten the Russian economy, primarily due to the increased risk of damage to the infrastructure of the Far North.'[ii]

Siberia can be described as naturally divided into three distinct climatic zones; the tundra, the taiga and the steppe. In the far North is the tundra. This is an area above the timberline with a climate which is one of the harshest on Earth. It is a vast expanse of frozen marshes, whose only vegetation is lichens, mosses, dwarf trees, shrubs and coarse grasses. The ground is permanently frozen ('permafrost') which makes any working of the soil impossible. In the short summer's slight thaw, the melting snow and ice create giant swamps where huge and voracious insects breed in vast numbers. In the winter this freezes again and is covered by a thick blanket of crusted snow.

To the south of the tundra can be found the area of the taiga. This zone of taiga comprises about 4.6 million square miles of Siberia and extends about 4,600 miles from east to west and between 600 to 1,200 miles north and south. This area is covered primarily by enormous tracts of virgin timber interspersed with huge swamps. In the transitional zone between the tundra and the taiga the land is mostly frozen all year long and is covered by widely-spaced trees. In the north these trees are primarily pine, larch, cedar, birch and cherry while in the southern reaches of the taiga the trees are mostly elm, aspen, poplar and maple.  In the winter the taiga is frozen solid and covered with a thick blanket of snow. In the late spring and summer it is a vast swampy marshland in which scores of insects breed. Temperatures in the taiga, although generally less cold than in the tundra, often reach -50  F and have been known to reach an all-time low of  -90. Travel is only possible in the winter when the ground is frozen.

Much of Siberia is formed by a deep layer of permafrost on top of which are frozen bogs. As the weather changes the ability of the Arctic to remain cold is diminished. The contraction of the Arctic ice cap is accelerating. Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world. Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing. Snow and ice usually form a protective, cooling layer over the Arctic. When that covering melts, the earth absorbs more sunlight and gets hotter. And the latest scientific data confirm the far-reaching effects of climbing global temperatures.

While this is interesting in itself its effects on Russian mining and petroleum and gas extraction are also a cause for concern.

Some of the most important areas of Russian mining are being affected by the rise in temperature as the mines are located in the areas which are warming the most quickly. The areas around Norilsk, Vorkuta, the Komi Peninsula and the Sakha Republic are heating up relatively quickly and the resultant temperature rises are allowing the methane gases trapped since the second Ice Age in the frozen bogs of the tundra and taiga to bubble to the surface. The mines, especially those deep mines which operate at 700 to 900 metres underground are right near the point of conversion of methane from a solid to a gaseous state. It seems clear that this climate change will have to be addressed by a much stronger effort in the mines to protect the workers from explosions, tunnel collapses and fires.

This is equally true for the oil and gas industries which operate in the same regions.

The melting of the Arctic Shelf along the northern coast of Russia has heightened the interest of the oil industry in monetarising the large quantities of methyl hydrates which are being freed by the warming.

The price of acquiring the methane from the hydrates and the seepage of the methane to the surface is also the price of endangering the lives of all who work in the industries and the mines. The mine owners and the oil and gas producers have shown little willingness to meet with the unions of workers who are endangered by the increasing number of preventable mine explosions due to the inability of the existing safety equipment to deal with the rising burden of methane seepage. This is also a problem for the buildings sited on top of gas seepages. They have been damaged by the effects of these rising gases. Oil pipelines are being stressed by movements of the land under them which causes distortion of the lines and breaks in the transmission. There is a relatively high cost involved in dealing with these problems which the companies are unwilling or unable to pursue due to the drop in commodity prices, international sanctions and historic lack of concern for worker safety.

There is no money around to address the growing social problems in Russia. A recent poll by VTsIOM found that that the number of poor families in Russia, as measured by those reporting difficulty paying for food and clothing, grew from 22 percent to 39 percent in 2015. The sharp decline in Russian living standards, which were hammered by last year’s recession, when the economy contracted by 3.7 percent and real wages fell by nine percent, is continuing in 2016.

Rising costs for food, medicine and utilities, along with pension arrears, are driving Russia’s elderly population into destitution. The average monthly retirement income for 2016 is projected to be just 13,132 roubles, or $166 about $50 more than the official poverty line for a single person. It will be lower, however, for pensioners who continue to work, as their retirement payments are not indexed to inflation at all. In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, pensioners who went to the post office in January to collect their monthly check were notified that due to “underfunding” and “cash flow” problems, they would not be able to collect their payments.

Households that had previously benefited from social programs providing a modicum of support for families with children now confront a double crisis of falling wages and reduced welfare benefits.
Wage arrears are also becoming widespread. As of December 2015, according to official statistics, there were 3.89 billion roubles in unpaid wages nationwide, а number that has been steadily growing since June 2012.  The Russian Ministry of Labour recently released data indicating that 631,000 workers are in immediate danger of losing their jobs. Over 60,000 enterprises employing 18 percent of the working population have declared their intention to let go staff. There are, in addition, over 280,000 so-called idle workers; those who either agreed to take an unpaid vacation or work fewer hours have had an increase of 74 percent compared to last year.

One out of every three Russians now has two or more relatives who have recently been laid off, reports VTsIOM. A new study by the Russian Environmental Policy Centre found a growing mood of protest in the population, particularly among the least well-off and those outside of the country’s largest urban centres. In mid-November, Russian truck drivers began demonstrations against a newly imposed federal highway tax intended to finance road repair and line the coffers of the Kremlin oligarch whose company owns the toll system that is destroying their earnings.[iii]

Regional newspapers described the teachers’ strike in late April — in Zabaikal Province, bordering China — as the first such labour action by teachers in Russia in years. The strike went ahead even though a regional governor had implored the teachers to work unpaid for patriotic reasons. In the Ural Mountains, workers at the Kachanarsk metallurgical plant that enriches vanadium, a metal used in steel alloys, went on a work-to-rule strike in March over layoffs. They are out again on the same issue. In the nearby city of Chelyabinsk, managers at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory, which has a rich and storied history as a showcase of industry in the Communist era, sent workers home on mandatory vacations for one day a week. There is another long-term strike taking place at the new cosmodrome being built at Vostochny by construction workers who have not been paid for months.

There are limited funds to pay for the vast improvements in mine safety that are required by the rise of the temperature in the Arctic. This means that these mine disasters are likely to continue. As one reaches the end of winter the pace will likely increase. On March 19 the Russians celebrate the Day of Darya the Martyr Gavnoplovkiy (when the shit rises). In the second half of March, as the thaw begins, the rivulets wash to the surface or up into ice holes pieces of excrement from the previous year which had been covered by the winter's snow. The white of the snow is darkened, for a while, by the floating residue of earlier deposits. There will be a lot to celebrate this Feast of Darya Gavnoplovkiy this year.

[iii] Andrea Peters, "Russian government prepares cuts as poverty surges", WSWS 20 January 2016