The northern part of the Caspian Sea will be ecologically monitored this year

The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources is intending to conduct the ecological monitoring of the northern part of the Caspian Sea. On Monday Ivan Glumov, deputy Minister of Natural Resources, said this at a press conference in Moscow. According to him, the Caspian Sea is now polluted and it can't cope with it through self-cleaning. At the same time he noted that inflowing waters are the main source of pollution rather than companies that are developing and extracting oil at the Russian Caspian shelf. Glumov cited a floating drilling plant of the LUKoil Shelf company as an example. It operates without discharging processed rock. The Deputy Minister said that a decision had been taken to use a null-discharge technology as a basis for drilling works while developing and extracting oil and gas in the Caspian Sea. Glumov also said that "the Russian potential sector of the Caspian shelf boasts approximately 2 billion tons of hydrocarbons but it is not the final figure."