Russian oil spill cleanup hampered by winds

PORT KAVKAZ, Russia - Fierce winds Tuesday hampered crews struggling to clean up in the wake of a killer storm that sank at least 11 ships and split an oil tanker in two, spilling more than 500,000 gallons of petroleum into the waters near this southern Russia seaport.

Officials called the breakup of the tanker an environmental disaster for the region and warned that the 2,000 metric tons of spilled fuel oil, which has killed an estimated 30,000 birds, could cause long-lasting damage to marine life.

Leading Russian environmentalists said the oil spill was triggered by years of official negligence that allowed oil transport ships to use outdated and inadequate equipment.

"It's a long-expected disaster," environmentalist Sergei Golubchikov told journalists in Moscow Tuesday. "We could lose the Black Sea if we go on this way."

Russia has a lot riding on the health of the Black Sea: President Vladimir Putin has pledged to spend $12 billion on developing the port of Sochi as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

High winds have prevented salvage teams from launching an effort to sweep the oil off the water's surface, officials said, allowing patches of the slick residue to drift to the seabed, where it could linger for years.

"Oil is falling on the sea floor, and that will result in an increased concentration of oil in the water for at least five years," said Yelena Vavila, an expert with the regional environmental monitoring agency.

Regional Gov. Alexander Tkachev told reporters that it was impossible to estimate the extent of the damage to the region's fisheries. "The damages are so great that it's hard to assess," he said Monday. "It can be equated with an ecological catastrophe."

Sunday's storm battered vessels plying the waters of the narrow Kerch Strait, connecting the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea. Russia ships almost one-quarter of its oil exports through Black Sea ports through the Bosporus and beyond.

Build dam to save sea?
Oleg Mitvol, the deputy head of the Russian state environmental safety watchdog, said that the most important task now was to build a dam across the strait to prevent the slick from floating into the Sea of Azov. "We have a real chance to save the ecosystem of the Sea of Azov," he said.

That effort, however, could face diplomatic obstacles, because Russia and Ukraine have a long-running argument over which country controls what parts of the waterway. Ukraine has objected in the past to Russian plans to build a similar dam, claiming it was an attempt to strengthen Moscow's claim to a disputed island.

Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov headed to the Black Sea region Tuesday, where he planned to assess the damage and work with Ukrainian officials on the cleanup effort.

Viktor Yanukovych, the prime minister of Ukraine, said he would meet with Zubkov and called for review of bilateral relations in the wake of the disaster. "We definitely need to examine, or, perhaps, re-examine the treaty between Ukraine and Russia," he told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Meanwhile scores of birds, weighed down by thick coatings of the fuel oil, hopped weakly along the shore or perched helplessly in the sand. Workers with pitchforks and shovels collected vast clumps of oil mixed with sand, seaweed and dead birds.

Some environmentalists call for tougher regulations that will punish oil companies polluting the sea.

"Russia needs a law that regulates sea pollution, and the Kerch strait should be declared an especially vulnerable sea zone," environmentalist Golubchikov said.

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