A Black Sea resort town is suing Russian ship companies after 10,000 people had to shovel spilled oil off its beaches

Yahoo

11-03-2025

The Russian sea resort town of Anapa is suing to cover its cleanup bill from a huge oil spill.
It's seeking 211 million rubles from the owner and operator of two tankers that breached last year.
The resulting massive spill has underscored concerns about aging ships carrying oil and gas for Russia.
The Russian summer resort town of Anapa is suing two shipping companies for $2.4 million after an oil spill devastated its local beaches.
The office of the town's mayor, Vasiliy Shvets, announced on Monday that it was seeking 211 million rubles from Volgatransneft and Kama Shipping, citing clean-up costs.
These firms owned and operated two tankers that breached near Anapa during a heavy storm in December.
State media reported that the Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239 carried 9,000 metric tons of low-grade fuel, more than half of which emptied into the Kerch Strait. The Black Sea area sits between Russia and the occupied Crimean peninsula.
Anapa, a popular holiday town of some 80,000 people, was hard hit by the spill, which contaminated over 30 miles of beach.
Authorities said the cleanup involved 10,000 people shoveling and scooping blackened sand and polluted water.
Moscow declared a federal state of emergency in mid-January, as the oil continued to spread nearly a month after the tankers were breached.
The spill drew international attention amid concerns that Russia's sanctioned energy industry is using a "shadow fleet" of commercial ships to ferry oil and gas to foreign customers.
Many such vessels are aging tankers pulled back into service that often prove difficult to track, prompting fears of further spillage and a lack of mechanisms to contain the damage.
The Volgoneft 212 — which split into two — and the Volgoneft 239 were both over 50 years old. Most major Western oil companies typically use tankers that have seen 15 years of service or fewer.
The grey-area status of Russia's dark vessels also underscores concern that they might not be properly insured to cover oil spills, leaving communities hit by such disasters to shoulder cleaning costs.
For Anapa, a popular holiday town of some 80,000 people, the $2.4 million is an incomplete tally of the money "already paid under contracts" to deal with the December spill, the mayor's office said.
"This amount is not final, and in the future, the administration intends to increase the claims," it added.
Per Russia's federal statistics agency, the average monthly salary in the Russian economy was 87,952 rubles, or about $1,000, in 2024.
Municipal filings for the arbitration court of the Krasnodar region show that Anapa submitted its lawsuit on Friday. Judge Irina Bondarenko is listed as overseeing the case.
Meanwhile, the town said on Saturday that it had begun testing its beaches for contamination, publishing footage of excavators and bulldozers cleaning up the seaside.
The long-term environmental impact of the spill remains to be seen.
In January, environmental advocacy group Greenpeace said the oil could sink to the bottom of the deep sea, poisoning fish and vegetation there.
"The impact of the ecological disaster could persist for decades," it wrote in a statement about the spill.
Volgatransneft did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours, and Kama Shipping did not return calls from BI.
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