Rescue teams in southern Russia have successfully removed nearly 1,500 tons of oil from a tanker that ran aground last year, officials reported on Saturday. The incident caused a massive oil spill that damaged several miles of coastline along the Black Sea. On December 15, two Russian ships, the Volgoneft-239 and Volgoneft-212, were severely damaged during a storm, leading to the spill of thousands of tons of mazut, a low-grade fuel oil, into the Kerch Strait.
A team from Russia’s Marine Rescue Service spent six days siphoning off the remaining 1,488 tons of oil from the grounded Volgoneft-239, as stated by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev in a post on the government’s official Telegram channel. Earlier this month, Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov had announced plans to drain the damaged tanker, but workers discovered it was still leaking oil into the water.
The Volgoneft-239 tanker will now undergo cleaning and preparation for dismantling, according to Savelyev. The fate of the second tanker, the Volgoneft-212, remains uncertain after it sank into the water.
So far, the oil from the spill has washed ashore in Russia’s Krasnodar region and in areas of Crimea and the Berdyansk Spit, both of which are under Russian control in Ukraine. The spill has affected beaches approximately 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of the Kerch Strait. President Vladimir Putin referred to the spill in January as “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years.”
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry reported on Saturday that over 173,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil have been collected as part of the ongoing cleanup, with thousands of volunteers participating in the effort.
