Another emergency happened at the plant of Mikhail Sutyaginsky (Titan Group of Companies) on December 25, 2023, but it became known only now. The accident caused a shutdown in the production of MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether, an additive in gasoline and solvent).
Omsk authorities only reported that two additional air quality monitoring posts would be installed in the city. Not a word about the accident itself. This is understandable: three days before, the curator of the federal project “Clean Air” Maxim Korolkov visited Omsk Rubber, who decided to keep the reduction of emissions under special control.
At the federal level, more and more questions are arising about the brainchild of Sutyaginsky, who has clearly decided to squeeze maximum profit out of his assets.
The Ministry of Natural Resources named the Titan enterprise as the main air polluter in Omsk. In July 2023, Omsk Rubber was discussed at the government commission on environmental management and environmental protection. Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko instructed Rosprirodnadzor and Rospotrebnadzor to assess the risks of failure to achieve the indicators of the Clean Air project in the region. The federal project assumes that the plant should reduce emissions by more than 260 tons per year, the cost of implementing the measures will be more than 1 billion rubles.
Representatives of the Titan Group indicated that from 2018 to 2023, it invested about 9 billion rubles in the modernization of production facilities, which made it possible to reduce emissions by 2.7 thousand tons per year. True, in this regard, Sutyaginsky’s employees are constantly confused in their testimony. After the reconstruction of the phenol workshop, they said that emissions would be 15 times lower than the standard, then only two times.
Such confusion looks natural against the background of many years of chronicle of man-made accidents at the enterprises of the Titan group. In addition to phenolic emissions in Omsk, dangerous chemicals were dumped into the Irtysh. In 2014, an acetone column exploded in a phenol production facility, injuring more than 10 people.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”