Oil spill from Russian tankers spreads
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Volunteers working to clear spilled oil near the Black Sea resort of Anapa, in Russia's Krasnodar region, on Dec 21.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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MOSCOW - Oil that leaked from two stricken tankers off the Russian coast has been detected on more beaches on Ukraine’s Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea, according to Russian officials, as volunteers mount a massive environmental clean-up operation.
Two ageing Russian tankers – the Volgoneft-212 and the Volgoneft-239 – were hit in December by a storm
They were carrying 9,200 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, around 40 per cent of which may have spilled into the sea, in what Russian leader Vladimir Putin called an “ecological disaster”.
“Two sites of oil product pollution were detected in Crimea,” Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said on Jan 2.
They were near the beach in the city of Kerch and further south near the Tobechytske lake.
Almost 73,000 tonnes of contaminated sand has been removed from dozens of kilometres of beaches on the Russian coast since the spill, the ministry said on Jan 2.
Some 200,000 tonnes of sand and soil could have been contaminated in total, officials have said.
The regional headquarters overseeing the clean-up published images of volunteers in white suits scooping contaminated sand off beaches with shovels, including in the popular resort city of Anapa.
It said on Jan 2 that 2,100 birds had been rescued so far.
Russian scientists in December criticised the clean-up, saying volunteers did not have the right equipment.
Ukraine has called the oil spill “the largest in the Black Sea region in the 21st century” and blamed Moscow for using ships unsuitable for harsh winter conditions.
Under Western sanctions, Russia has resorted to using a so-called “shadow fleet” of mostly old tankers
“Most of the more than 1,000 tankers of the Russian ‘shadow fleet’ are hopelessly outdated, have fictitious insurance policies, conceal their true owners, and often overload oil at sea. Other large-scale accidents are statistically inevitable,” Mr Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said in December. AFP
