OREANDA-NEWS. The scale of the oil spill in the Black Sea near Novorossiysk is significantly underestimated, according to the Russian Academy of Sciences. The area of oil pollution at the time of the radar survey was almost 80 square kilometers, the Institute for Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences said on Tuesday, August 10, after analyzing the image of the water area of the north-eastern part of the sea. The oil slick was stretched from the shore to the open sea at a distance of 19 kilometers, the academy stressed.

At the same time, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which reported on the «oil output» on August 7 when it was pumped to the Greek tanker Minerva Symphony, indicated the spill area of 200 square meters. This is 400 thousand times less than the value determined by the specialists of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 17 emergency rescue vessels were involved in eliminating the consequences, the spill was eliminated in a few hours, the consortium assured.

Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Victoria Abramchenko instructed the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor) to check the data of the Russian Academy of Sciences and assess the true scale of the oil spill.

This is not the first similar disaster in Russia recently. So, in May, at the Karamovskoye field of Gazpromneft-Noyabrskneftegaz JSC an oil-containing liquid spilled over an area of 15 thousand square meters.

In 2020, cases of oil spills were detected in several regions of Russia. One of the most resonant incidents was a major accident at the CHPP-3 in Norilsk at the end of May, called the largest environmental disaster in the Arctic. The court recovered from the mining and metallurgical company «Norilsk Nickel» 146.2 billion rubles of a fine for damage to nature.