The spill happened when a fuel tank at a power plant near the Siberian city of Norilsk collapsed last Friday.

President Putin has expressed outrage after he learned that officials learned about this incident only two days later.

The plant belongs to a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, which is the world’s leading producer of Nickel and palladium.

And in a televised video conference on Wednesday, Mr Putin lambasted the head of the company over the timeliness of its response.

“Why did government agencies only find out about this two days after the fact?” he asked the subsidiary’s chief, Sergei Lipin. “Are we going to learn about emergency situations from social media?”

The region’s governor, Alexander Uss, had earlier told President Putin that he became aware of the oil spill on Sunday after “alarming information appeared in social media”.

Putin has ordered an investigation of the accident, then was arrested the Manager of the plant.

In a statement, Norilsk Nickel said the incident had been reported in a “timely and proper” way.

The accident happened when the pillars supporting a fuel tank at a power plant began to sink. The area is built on permafrost which has been melting as the climate warms.

The oil spill drifted about 12 km (7,5 miles) from the crash site, turning long stretches of a river by a Barn crimson red.

The state of emergency means extra forces will be sent to the area to assist with the clean-up operation.

The accident is believed to be the second largest in modern Russian history in terms of volume, an expert from the World Wildlife Fund told the AFP news agency.

He gave 350 sq km (135 sq. m.) square, state media reports.

The incident has prompted stark warnings from environmental groups, who say the scale of the spill and the geography of the river means it will be difficult to clean-up.

It is not the first time Norilsk Nickel has been involved in oil spillages.

In 2016, it admitted that an accident at one of its plants was responsible for turning a nearby river red.