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Oil spill on Russia’s coast may
damage ecology
16 November, 2007
Several miles along the coast of
Russia’s Black Sea are confronting an
ecological disaster after an oil
tanker broke up in a severe storm in
which hundreds of tonnes of oil
spilled onto the shore.
In all, five ships had got wrecked in
the storm.
Tens of thousands of seabirds and
large numbers of fish had perished as
a result of the spill, Russian
officials said.
A flock of about 1,000 rails, a
species of birds that inhabit the
wetland, were stuck on the beach,
unable to fly because their feathers
were covered with oil.
The polluted area also happens to be
centre of the migration route in the
Black Sea of red-throated and
black-throated Siberian diver birds
from central Siberia.
The extent of the environmental damage
is yet to be estimated, but the
present oil spill is said to be
smaller compared to the 64,000-tonne
oil that leaked from the tanker
Prestige in 2002, which had hit the
coasts of Portugal, Spain and France.
An official of the World Wildlife Fund
(WWF), the world’s largest
organization devoted to conservation,
said the WWF hoped “the Black Sea
catastrophe should lead Russia to
adopt a law guaranteeing proper safety
of oil operations at sea and on
rivers.”
In a statement, the World Wildlife
Fund said the problem ran deeper than
“errors in judgment by the captains of
the wrecked ships,” citing the Russian
practice of using river tankers, like
Volganeft-139, on the open sea in
rough weather.
It added, “It is a systemic problem.
Most river tankers simply are not
constructed for such storms, and the
seagoing vessels cannot sail on the
rivers Don and Volga. The accident,
the first significant maritime oil
spill in Russia during the current oil
boom, should impel the country to
adopt more stringent laws on tanker
traffic, noting that laws requiring
double-hulled tankers were introduced
in the United States after the Exxon
Valdez spill in 1989.”
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