Norilsk Nickel pays $2.5 billion to Russia over massive Arctic oil spill

Norilsk Nickel has confirmed it has paid Russia $US2 billion ($2.5 billion) for damage caused by a fuel spill last year which caused the country’s worst Arctic environmental disaster.

The leak of 21,000 tonnes of diesel into rivers and subsoil from a rusty-looking storage tank at the mining firm’s Norilsk power plant in Siberia angered Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Norilsk is a remote city of 180,000 situated 300km inside the Arctic Circle.

It is 2,900 kilometres…