Rescue workers have successfully removed almost 1,500 tonnes of oil left on board a tanker that ran aground last year in southern Russia, officials said.
The mishap resulted in a devastating oil spill that damaged miles of coastline along the Black Sea.
Two Russian ships, the Volgoneft-239 and the Volgoneft-212, were badly damaged in stormy weather in December, resulting in thousands of tonnes of low-grade fuel oil called mazut spilling into the Kerch Strait.
A crew from Russia’s Marine Rescue Service siphoned away the remaining 1,488 tonnes of oil left in the grounded Volgoneft-239 in a six-day operation, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Savelyev said in a post on the Russian government’s official Telegram channel.
Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov announced that the damaged tanker would be drained earlier this month but workers found it was continuing to leak oil into the water.
The Volgoneft-239 will now be cleaned and prepared for being dismantled, Savelyev said. The fate of the second tanker, the Volgoneft-212, remains undecided after the boat sank beneath the waves.
So far, oil from the spill has washed up along beaches in Russia’s Krasnodar region, as well as in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Crimea and the Berdyansk Spit, some 90 miles north of the Kerch Strait.
Earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin called the spill “one of the most serious environmental challenges we have faced in recent years”.
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said more than 173,000 tonnes of contaminated sand and soil have so far been collected by the clean-up effort, with thousands of volunteers joining the operation.
