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       MOSCOW: Spilled oil has washed up along “tens of kilometres” of the Russian Black Sea coast after two tankers were badly damaged in a storm at the weekend, a regional official said on Tuesday, and state media said a third ship was now in trouble.

       TASS news agency said the third tanker had issued a distress signal but its hull was still intact, there was no oil spillage and the crew was safe. RIA news agency said the tanker, Volgoneft 109, was safely stationed near the port of Kavkaz in the Kerch Strait, which runs between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

       The first ship, the Volgoneft 212, split in half on Sunday in the strait. The second, the Volgoneft 239, ran aground 80 metres from the shore near the port of Taman on the east side of the strait.

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       The ships, both more than 50 years old, were carrying some 9,200 metric tons of oil products in total, TASS reported, raising fears it could become one of the largest environmental disasters to hit the region in years. A certificate showed the third tanker was built in 1973 and was part of the same ageing fleet.

       Beach town Anapa declares emergency over oil spill

       Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of the southern Krasnodar region, said fuel oil had been found along the coast between the towns of Temryuk and Anapa.

       “This morning, while monitoring the shoreline, stains of fuel oil were discovered. Oil products washed ashore for several tens of kilometres,” he said.

       The Russian Black Sea resort town also declared a state of emergency on Tuesday after oil spilled from two damaged tankers. “Anapa is in a state of emergency due to the oil products spill,” the local mayor’s office said on Telegram, adding that “an operation to eliminate the consequences is underway”.

       Located in the southern Kras-nodar region close to the Crimean penin-sula annexed from Ukraine, the town of Anapa has a population of around 90,000 people.

       The regional minister for emergency situations, Sergei Shtrikov, on Tuesday said fuel dispersed over at least 30 kilometres of beach, contaminating the coastline. “Oil slicks from the sunken tanker have reached the coastline of the Anapa district,” said Svetlana Radionova, head of Russia’s natural resources agency.

       Authorities also declared a state of emergency in four smaller towns. The emergency situations ministry said 400 personnel joined clean-up efforts.

       A video posted by Zvezda TV showed a black, oil-like substance along the coast at Anapa, and tarry stains along a beach strewn with tree branches.

       TASS news agency, citing a scientist, said the nearby Kerch Strait, which separates Russia’s Krasnodar region from the Crimean peninsula that Moscow annexed from Crimea in 2014, is an important area for migrating dolphins and other sea mammals.

       “You can say they hit a key place,” Dmitry Glazov of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution was quoted as saying.

       Ukraine’s environmental ministry said on Monday that the “significant” accident posed the “threat of a large-scale environmental disaster in the Black Sea” and could have “catastrophic consequences for the marine ecosystem”.

       Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2024