PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, June 17 (RIA Novosti, Oksana Guseva) - Over 6,300 signatures were collected in Kamchatka (Russia's Far East) to demand a referendum against oil production on the Western Kamchatka shelf. The local election commission checked the signatures and found 6,100 of them valid.
Deputies of the regional council will fix the date of the referendum at an extraordinary session on June 21. It is expected to coincide with the referendum on the unification of Kamchatka and Koryakia scheduled for October 23.
According to ecologists, the survey of shelf oil fields poses real threat to the ecological system of the Sea of Okhotsk.
Head of the Kamchatka Ecology Institute Robert Moiseyev said that there were five regions of high fish and crab reproduction in the world, with Kamchatka being one of them. The destruction of the ecological system of the Sea of Okhotsk will inflict inevitable damage on Far Eastern economy.
Ecologists and economists should evaluate possible consequences before staring oil survey and production on the shelf of the Sea of Okhotsk, the scientists said.
However, Kamchatka governor Mikhail Mashkovtsev comes out for producing oil on the Western Kamchatka shelf.
"After the evaluation of reserves we should consider economic consequences of possible oil survey. It will take many years to put this work on an industrial basis," he said.
The forecasted resources of Western Kamchatka shelf are 900 million tons of fuel equivalent.
