‘Environmental disaster’ as oil tanker breaks

A SEVERE storm broke a small Russian oil tanker in two off the Ukrainian port of Kerch yesterday, spilling up to 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil in what a Russian official said was an “environmental disaster”.

The same storm in the Black Sea and Azov Sea also sank four freighters, three carrying sulphur and one with a cargo of scrap metal. The heavy seas also cracked the hull of another oil tanker, but the ship was afloat and not leaking.

The sunken tanker, Volganeft-139, had travelled from the Russian port of Azov and was anchored outside Kerch in Ukraine’s eastern Crimea to ride out the weather, when high waves broke its back, media reported.

The 1978-built tanker, designed primarily for inland and coastal service, was carrying 4,000 tonnes offuel oil in total when it was hit by the storm, which has knocked out electricity supplies to much of Crimea.

“This problem may take a few years to solve. Fuel oil is a heavy substance and it is now sinking to the seabed,” Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of Russia’s environment agency Rosprirodnadzor said.

The tanker’s 13 crew members drifted for hours in waves up to 6m aboard the ship’s stern before beaching safely, the emergencies ministry said. The crew was safe, it added.

The likely effects of the spill were not immediately clear. The polluted area is at the heart of the migration route from central Siberia into the Black Sea of red-throated and black-throated Siberian divers. The area is also home to porpoises.