SYKTYVKAR, Komi Republic -- Oil giant Komineft delayed, for days, releasing crucial information on an enormous oil spill, causing damage to the environment that could have been prevented, local officials and preservationists said Thursday.


In fact, it happened twice: in August, when a pipeline burst in 23 different spots spewing oil into a swamp, and again in late September, when a dam near the swamp broke and sent oil into a river. In both instances, the Komineft oil company waited several days before telling local officials, and the oil was left flowing out of control.


Nikolai Babin, head of the Komi ecology committee, said in interview with The Moscow Times that he learned of the October spill only from his own assistants in the region, while Komineft kept quiet.


"There was no quick information during the first days. Later, yes," Babin said, pacing nervously up and down his office, reluctant to criticize the powerful Komineft oil company. "They did not tell us immediately."


But Valentin Leonidov, the general director of Komineft AO, reached at his office in Ukhta, flatly denied that there was any delay in information.


"That's nonsense, we have all the facts here," he said. "We told everybody everything on Aug 12."


According to Leonidov, that According to Leonidov, that was the day gas began escaping from the pipeline, indicating a depressurization. After that, when a more serious leak developed on Sept. 6, the pipeline was completely shut down and repair work proceeded until Sept. 12, when 5 kilometers of pipe were replaced and the pipeline began functioning normally again. Any oil that spilled as a result of the leak was retained behind an earth dam.


When heavy rains broke the dam -- Leonidov said that was on Sept. 26, contradicting earlier reports from his own company -- local authorities in Komi and the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Moscow were notified.


News of the accident did not break publicly until Tuesday, when an article in the New York Times quoted U.S. officials as saying that up to 250,000 tons may have spilled -- eight times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. Komineft officials maintain that only 14,000 tons of oil spilled, plus a few additional tons of an oil-and-water mixture.


Komi officials downplayed the extent of the catastrophe. "It was not a disaster. It's a local incident," said Vyacheslav Bibikov, vice president of the Komi Republic.


Whatever Komineft did to stanch the flow of the toxic oil, it did not follow the most effective procedures, said Peter Condy of Arizona-based Ecological Technologies International.


"Rather than damming it, you immediately start collecting it," said Condy, an expert on oil spill cleanups. "Immediately you begin a recollection process that's done through skimmers, absorbents, diversion methods, you name it. You don't just let it sit there."


But according to Komineft officials, the inaccessibility of the swampy region made a dam the only option until clean-up equipment could be brought in.


Anatoly Nyukin, head of the local civil defense committee that organized the clean-up, said that a river of oil had run for 1.5 kilometers before spilling into the Kolva River. The river banks were covered in oil for a stretch of 7 kilometers, he said. Small amounts had flowed into the Usa river, but not into the Pechora, a salmon habitat and major source of water for the 60,000 residents of Usinsk.


But Valentina Semyashkina, a member of a group called Save the Pechora, insisted that it had been contaminated. She said an oil slick covered the surface of the river, which empties into the Barents Sea. Moreover, she said, Komineft's reluctance to alert local officials to the disaster had exacerbated the damage.


"The impact could have been a lot less if they had announced it earlier," she said, adding that a Sept. 30 telegram from her group to the Russian Ecology Ministry announcing the accident went unanswered. Semyashkina said local authorities were indeed notified on Aug. 12 of the incident, but said that the actual spill began earlier in the month.


Another source also contradicted Komineft's story. Amos Smith, operations manager for Conoco, which shares the Komineft pipeline involved in the accident, said he was told the line was closing for "maintenance" from Sept. 6 to Sept. 13. He was told nothing of a spill.


"They advised us they were shut down for maintenance, and as the maintenance progressed, we found out it was for leak repairs," he said. The spill, which Smith said was discovered during a routine flyover, came as some surprise. "Of course we're upset when it leaks and shuts down."


Komineft is well aware of the poor state of its pipeline, Leonidov said. And they plan to have the entire line replaced. It would have been done sooner, Leonidov said, but the company doesn't have enough money. More than 80 percent of their production, he said, goes to pay taxes.


"It's crazy, he said, "but we live in a crazy country."