Oil from Russian tanker spill reaches Sevastopol

MOSCOW (AFP): Oil from two ageing and damaged Russian tankers – one of which sank – was detected on Friday off the coast of Sevastopol, the largest city in Moscow-annexed Crimea.

The Volgoneft-212 and the Volgoneft-239 were hit last month by a storm in the Kerch Strait, which links Crimea to the southern Russian Krasnodar region and is about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Sevastopol.

One sank and the other ran aground, pouring around 2,400 tons of mazut, or heavy fuel oil, into the surrounding waters, according to Russia’s transport ministry.

“A small oil slick reached Sevastopol today,” the Moscow-installed head of the city, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram, publishing a video of the oil, a thick substance known as mazut.

He said it was around 1.5 meters in width and length.

Sevastopol, with a population of over half a million, is the historic home of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet, heavily targeted by Ukraine throughout the nearly three-year conflict.

President Vladimir Putin has called it an “ecological disaster” and hundreds of volunteers have been deployed to scoop up contaminated soil from beaches in Crimea and along Russia’s southern coast.

The transport ministry said the type of oil is particularly hard to clean as it is dense and heavy and does not float on the surface.

It is the first incident of its kind ever involving M-100 grade mazut, Russia’s transport ministry said.

“There is no proven technology anywhere in the world to remove it from the water column,” it said on social media.

“Therefore, the main method is collection from the shoreline, when the mazut has been dumped on the coastal zone,” the ministry said.

Some 78,000 tons of contaminated soil and sand has been removed from beaches so far, Russia’s emergency situations ministry said Friday. Up to 200,000 tons may need to be removed.

Ukraine has slammed Russia over the spill, accusing it of trying to ship oil products in vessels unfit for harsh winter sea conditions.

Under Western sanctions, Russia has resorted to using a so-called “shadow fleet” of mostly old tankers to export its fuels around the world.

Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 following a pro-EU revolution in Kyiv.