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Big bill for clean-up of Black Sea oil
spill
November 16 2007 at 02:04AM
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 Moscow
- Russian authorities on Thursday estimated the damage from a 2 000-ton
fuel oil spill in the Black Sea this week at $12,4-billion, news agency
reports said.
"The possible damage from the catastrophe will be around 304 billion
rubles," Nikolai Bezirganin, the local head of Russian fisheries agency
Rosrybolovstvo, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Bezirganin said the estimate included the costs of cleaning up the spill
over the next 10 years and restoring the ecosystems in the waters of the
Black Sea and the Sea of Azov where the accident happened.
A powerful storm on Sunday wrecked five ships in Russian and Ukrainian
waters in the north-eastern corner of the Black Sea, including an oil
tanker.
The resulting spill has killed thousands of seabirds and fish. -
Sapa-AFP
Russian birds and fish
die in oil spill
By MASHA STROMOVA, Associated Press Writer
Mon Nov 12, 3:47 PM ET
PORT KAVKAZ, Russia - More than 30,000 birds and countless fish have
been killed in an "ecological catastrophe" wrought by thousands of tons
of oil from a tanker that broke apart in a heavy storm near the Black
Sea, the governor of the region said Monday.
Birds weighed down by thick coatings of the fuel oil hopped weakly along
the shore or sat helplessly in the sand. Workers with pitchforks and
shovels started the backbreaking labor of gathering up vast clumps of
oil mixed with sand and seaweed.
The tanker was one of up to 10 ships that sank or ran aground in the
storm Sunday in the strait connecting the Black and Azov Seas. The
bodies of three sailors from a freighter that also broke apart washed up
on shore Monday, and rescuers were looking for five missing crewmen,
said Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Sergei Kozhemyaka.
The spill from the oil tanker was seen as potentially the worst
environmental disaster in the region in recent years. It prompted
criticism that many Russian tankers aren't seaworthy.
"Some 30,000 birds have died and it's not possible to count how many
fish. The damages are so great that it's hard to assess. It can be
equated with an ecological catastrophe," said Alexander Tkachev, the
governor of the Krasnodar region, according to the Interfax news agency.
Another regional official, Sergei Zaitsev, was quoted as saying that
much of the oil still on the water's surface could congeal in the wintry
temperatures, forming globs that drop to the seabed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov to
fly to the region to assess the disaster and clean-up efforts.
Three freighters, including the one with the missing sailors, spilled
sulfur into the sea when they sank. But Russian environmental officials
said the sulfur spills did not appear to pose any environmental danger.
Jim Farr, a chemist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, compared the spill to dumping a load of sand in the
water and smothering a reef, or covering a patch of grass with a blanket.
However, he said that it was difficult to know the long-term effects
without better knowledge of the area's depth and currents.
The Volganeft-139 tanker was carrying about 1.3 million gallons of fuel
oil when the storm sundered it. About half its load has leaked out
already, officials estimated. The craft's 13 crew members were rescued.
Alexei Knizhnikov, head of the World Wildlife Federation's Russian oil
and gas program, said the Volganeft-139 was constructed for river use
and was unfit to endure severe weather at sea.
"In the Kerch Strait, river vessels and sea vessels change cargoes, as
sea vessels cannot enter the Don and Volga rivers because of small water
draft. But vessels constructed for rivers cannot stand strong sea storms,"
he said.
Anatoly Yanhuck, a regional coast guard officer, said workers would
begin pumping oil from the tanker once the weather improves, then tow
the ship to port. Investigators would be looking at the actions of the
ship's captain, but he said the weather appeared to have been worse than
forecast.
Vesti 24 television on Sunday reported the sinking of a Russian
freighter carrying metal near the port of Sevastopol on Ukraine's
Crimean Peninsula. Two members of its 16-man crew drowned and one was
missing, it said.
Maxim Stepanenko, a regional prosecutor, told Vesti 24 that captains had
been warned Saturday about the stormy conditions. He said the Volganeft-139
— designed during Soviet times to transport oil on rivers — was not
built to withstand a fierce storm.
Russian
prosecutors probe Black Sea oil spill
By Moscow correspondent Emma Griffiths
Posted Mon Nov 12, 2007 9:47am AEDT
Video: Russian oil tanker breaks up off Ukraine (ABC News) Russian
prosecutors are investigating possible criminal charges relating to an
oil spill near the Black Sea, after four ships sunk and fears grew for
23 missing sailors.
A severe storm and five-metre waves hit the Kerch Strait between the
Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, splitting a Russian oil tanker in half.
Bad weather is hampering efforts by rescuers to find the missing sailors.
The tanker was at anchor in Ukranian waters and spilled more than 1,000
tonnes of oil.
Prosecutors are investigating whether any breaches in pollution and
security standards may have contributed.
Russian environmental groups and lobbyists say the accident is a serious
disaster that may take years to clean up, but the amount of oil involved
is small compared with a spill off the Spanish coast five years ago,
when more than 60,000 tonnes of oil caused severe damage.
The harsh conditions are also preventing emergency workers from
containing the oil, which is sinking to the seabed.
Winds Halt Cleanup of
Russian Oil Spill
By MASHA STROMOVA and MANSUR MIROVALEV, AP ONLINE
PORT KAVKAZ, Russia (AP) - Fierce winds Tuesday hampered crews
struggling to clean up in the wake of a killer storm that sank at least
11 ships and split an oil tanker in two, spilling tons of petroleum in
the waters near this southern Russia seaport.
Officials called the breakup of the tanker an environmental disaster for
the region and warned that the 560,000 gallons of spilled fuel oil,
which has killed an estimated 30,000 birds, could cause long-lasting
damage to marine life.
Leading Russian environmentalists, meanwhile, said the oil spill was
triggered by years of official negligence that allowed oil transport
ships to use outdated and inadequate equipment.
"It's a long-expected disaster," environmentalist Sergei Golubchikov
told journalists in Moscow Tuesday. "We could lose the Black Sea if we
go on this way.
Russia has a lot riding on the health of the Black Sea: President
Vladimir Putin has pledged to spend $12 billion on developing the port
of Sochi as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Eleven ships sank or ran aground in Sunday's gale, including the tanker
that spilled the fuel and a freighter that carrying sulfur, officials
said. The bodies of three crew members from the freighter have been
found, and crews were searching for five missing crewmen, said Sergei
Kozhemyaka, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.
High winds have prevented salvage teams from launching an effort to
sweep the oil off the water's surface, officials said, allowing patches
of the slick residue to drift to the seabed, where it could linger for
years.
Yelena Vavila, an expert with the regional environmental monitoring
agency, warned about "increased concentration of oil in the water for at
least five years."
The storm battered vessels plying the waters of the narrow Kerch Strait,
connecting the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea. Russia ships almost 25
percent of its oil exports via the Black Sea.
The most important task now is to build a dam to prevent the slick from
floating into the Sea of Azov, said Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the
Russian state environmental safety watchdog Rosprirodnadzor. "We have a
real chance to save the ecosystem of the Sea of Azov," he said.
However, Russia and Ukraine have a long-running argument over which
country controls what parts of the waterway. Ukraine has objected in the
past to Russian plans to build a similar dam, calling it an attempt to
strengthen Moscow's claim to a disputed island.
Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov visited the region Tuesday and said that
most of the oil could be cleaned off the shoreline within three weeks
and that all would be gone within 45 days.
Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said he would meet with
Zubkov and called for review of bilateral relations. "We definitely need
to examine, or, perhaps, re-examine the treaty between Ukraine and
Russia," he told the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Meanwhile, scores of birds - weighed down by thick coatings of the fuel
oil - hopped weakly along the shore or perched helplessly in the sand.
Workers with pitchforks and shovels collected vast clumps of oil mixed
with sand, seaweed and dead birds.
Environmentalists call for tougher regulations. "Russia needs a law that
regulates sea pollution, and the Kerch Strait should be declared an
especially vulnerable sea zone," Golubchikov said.
So far, the birds are the catastrophe's most obvious victims. Vasily
Spiridonov, marine and coastal projects chief coordinator for the WWF-Russia,
said "the damage to the seafloor ecosystem is harder to measure."
But at least one Russian scientist cautioned against overstating the
effects of the spill, saying the flyways of swans and other migratory
birds lie to the south of northern Black Sea coastline.
"The claims about the death of 30,000 birds are, most probably, an
overestimation," Boris Vasilyev, a biologist at the Moscow State
University, told ITAR-Tass.
Associated Press writer Mansur Mirovalev contributed to this report from
Moscow.
11/13/07 16:16 EST
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_
id=nw20071115231308722C116802
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071112/ap_on_re_eu/russia_oil_spill
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/12/2087884.htm?section=world
http://channels.aol.ca/news/article.adp?id=20071113161809990001
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