Oil spill in the Black Sea is much larger than reported

Oil spill in the Black Sea is much larger than reported
Oil spill in the Black Sea is much larger than reported
Anonim

The oil spill off the Russian Black Sea coast over the weekend spread over an area of almost 80 square kilometers and turned out to be much larger than previously estimated, scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) reported on Wednesday, citing satellite images.

The leak occurred when a Greek-flagged tanker Minerva Symphony was receiving oil at the Yuzhno-Ozereevka sea terminal near Novorossiysk in southern Russia, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which owns the terminal, said on Monday.

The consortium that transports oil from Kazakhstan said on Monday that the spill occurred over an area of 200 square meters, and 12 cubic meters of oil fell into it. The spill was quickly contained and posed no threat to people or wildlife, he said.

But on Wednesday, the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences said that a satellite image taken on Sunday and studied by two RAS scientists showed that the leak covered a much larger area.

"According to their calculations … the area of oil pollution at the time of receiving the radar image reached almost 80 square kilometers," - said in a statement on the website of the institute.

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