The nearby Ob river has been reduced to an oily sluice. Pipeline accidents number 600 per year. Just about everyone in the Soviet Union hates the project, except, of course, the Stalin-era ministries that are pushing it ahead. The Astrakhan plant was equipped with a French-made pollution control system, which did not work, necessitating the evacuation of nearby villages. Scientists predict the same thing will happen with the new projects, which have the potential to produce an accident comparable in scale to Chernobyl.
Occidental is involved in two other environmentally destructive projects.
One is the Ventspils Petrochemical Complex in Latvia, which processes petroleum products for export. Enormous amounts of toxic and flammable chemicals from the complex swirl through the city and around the countryside. Occidental signed another deal to expand a chemical plant in the Ukraine that produces plastics. It already is a major polluter and each expansion is likely to make matters even worse. In both Latvia and Ukraine, independent or local reform groups have mounted serious, ongoing opposition to these foreign projects.