Soon after a petrochemical plant owned by a subsidiary of PetroChina in northeast China was rocked by explosion on November 2005 and a hundred tons of benzene and nitrobenzene belched into the near Songhua and Amur rivers, a question of blame arose. Were those directly operating the plant solely at fault? Weren't the safety inspectors also guilty in part? It's hard to identify a single culprit, but one person who shares at least part of the responsibility seems to be the president of PetroChina, Jiang Jiemin.
Entering China's largest petroleum company after graduating with a Ph.D. in economics, Jiang worked his way up the ranks of this sprawling body of half-a-million employees. By 1993 he was deputy director of a local administrative bureau and less than six years later he was a vice-president. When the elderly Chen Gen stepped down in 2004, Jiang became president of PetroChina.
Jiang once held a number of government posts during his career – important in a country where the state controls the largest businesses. From 1999-2004 he was vice-governor of Qinghai Province. Imagine an oil company executive also being the #2 official in a province! What a brilliant way to cut through red tape and insure that corporate interests are met! The fact that the company denied that the November 13 explosion could have leaked any pollutants into surrounding estuaries at first and that the newspapers were initially vague about the accident attests to the power of big oil (and big government) in the People's Republic.
Described by the Sunday Times (2008, March 9) as "imperious and remote" Jiang probably believes he's helping the world's most populous country satisfy its energy needs. And perhaps he actually is. Yet in the process, what price is being paid? Persons living near the oil refineries operated by PetroChina may have an answer. The fact that Innovest rated PetroChina at the bottom (along with Yukos, Marathon, and Surgutneftegas) in terms of its corporate environmental responsibility in 2004 suggests there's major cleaning up to do. Like many oil companies, PetroChina pumps out a fair amount of green rhetoric (useful when attracting investors), but if one looks closely at how business is done, much of the patina fades.

Sources:

12 Manage - Corporate Responsibility Forum. (2004, December 10). Oil Companies ranked on CSR. Retrieved March 13, 2008 from http://www.managementlogs.com/corporate_responsibility.html
Forbes. (2008). Business Profiles: Jiemin Jiang. Retrieved March 13, 2008 from http://www.forbes.com/finance/ mktguideapps/personinfo/FromPersonIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedPersonId=941831
Imagethief. (2005, November 26). Weekend PR Blog: The Harbin Water Crisis. Retrieved March 13, 2008 from http://news.imagethief.com/blogs/china/archive/2005/11/26/5223.aspx
Times Online. (2008, March 9). The top 10 Chinese firms that will challenge the West. The Sunday Times (Economics Column). Retrieved March 13, 2008 from http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article3510632.ece
U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2006, Dec. 12). China: Oil. Retrieved March 13, 2008 from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/China/Oil.html
Wu Y., & He, N. (2005, November 15). Cause of Jilin chemical plant blasts found. China Daily [English Version]. Retrieved March 13, 2008 from http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-11/15/content_494601.htm

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According to a 2006 Blacksmith Institute report, one of the most polluted places on the planet is a city of 134,000 in Siberia. Site of the world's largest heavy metal mine, high concentrations of copper, nickel, sulphur dioxide, and formaldehyde abound in and around this city. The smelters of Norilsk and adjacent Talnakh are said to spew out 4 million tons of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium and zinc into the atmosphere each year. An estimated 1% of the planet's sulfuric acid emissions comes from the smokestack of one plant there. Satellite images around the site reveal a zone around Norilsk with no trees for dozens of kilometers. Life expectancy here is 10 years below the national average and lung disease rates are much higher.
The first private owners of this huge industrial facility were two oligarchs in the newly capitalist Russian economy. Vladimir Potanin & Mikhail Prokhorov worked out a deal with Yelstin in 1995 to obtain control of this mining site in a "loans-for-shares" offer. They quickly cut jobs, discontinued unprofitable operations, updated equipment, and tried to get the company out of the red. To their credit, better pollution controls were initiated. However, some environmental groups feel the changes did not go far enough.
Starting out as a gulag slave labor camp in 1935, thousands have perished in the mines and smelters of Norilsk. Most of the headaches this city faces are deeply rooted. It is difficult to know how many of the problems have been rectified. In 2001, Norilsk was decreed a closed city for foreigners, with travel permits required for Russians as well. This makes it difficult to know what's happening in Norilsk today. Though national security is cited as the reason for this lack of transparency, shrouded business environments not only engender corruption, they also make it easier for environmental abuses to go unreported.
In 2007 Potanin and Prokhorov dissolved their partnership. Potanin obtained controlling shares of the nickel operations and Prokhorov focused on gold. Soon afterwards, amidst takeover rumors by the national government, Russia's Natural Resources Ministry's fined Norilsk Nickel 4.35 billion rubles ($178 million) in a pollution lawsuit. Will that force Norilsk Nickel to adopt much more stringent environmental controls?

Sources:

Blacksmith Institute. (2007). World's Most Polluted Places > Norilsk, Russia. Retrieved March 15, 2008 from http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/site10h.php
Gordon, M. L. (1997, December 9). Siberia's Latest Challenge: Capitalism. Retrieved March 15, 2008 from http://econ.la.psu.edu/~bickes/norilsk.htm
Norilsk. (2008). In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 15, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norilsk
PBS. (2000, October 6). Commanding Heights : Vladimir Potanin. Retrieved March 15, 2008 from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_vladimirpotanin.html#1
Silobreaker, Ltd. (2008). Mikhail Prokhorov. Retrieved March 15, 2008 from http://www.silobreaker.com/View360.aspx?Item=11_226730
Sprol.com (2005, June 30). Worst Places In The World > The Real Norilsk. Retrieved March 15, 2008 from http://www.sprol.com/?p=193

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