MOSCOW Reuters - The Russian miner Mikhail Nornickel said on Friday it would discuss an out-of-court settlement with the state fisheries agency, which sought damages of 58.7 billion roubles $806 million from the metals miner over the 2020 Arctic fuel spill.
Nornickel, world's leading nickel and palladium producer, had previously paid $2 billion for environmental damage by the leak of 21,000 tonnes of diesel into rivers and subsoil from a storage tank at its power plant in May 2020.
Nornickel and the Federal Agency for Fisheries Rosrybolovstvo agreed to negotiate a settlement out-of-court of a lawsuit filed by the agency against one of the company's subsidiaries, Nornickel said in a statement.
The spill in Norilsk, an industrial city on the Arctic Circle, was the worst environmental disaster in Russia in this century, environmentalists say.
The state fisheries agency filed its claim to the Kara Sea in July by saying the spill had polluted lakes, and rivers leading to the lake. It estimated the cost of work to restore aquatic bioresources at more than 55 billion roubles and estimated direct damage caused by fish death at 3.6 billion roubles.
A court adjourned the proceedings for 60 days to allow the parties to negotiate in court settlements, including compensation for damage to aquatic bioresources, Nornickel said.