Alarm bells were ringing at Uralkali, Russia’s leading fertiliser company, on Friday after the Kremlin re-opened the investigation of a flood at a potash mine in the Urals Mountains in 2006.

Igor Sechin, Russia’s deputy prime minister, instructed Rostekhnadzor, the federal service for environmental, technological and nuclear supervision, to form a commission to determine the causes of the flood that disabled the Berezniki mine, Uralkali said in a statement.