Russian ship Arctic Metagaz
Russian tanker adrift. It has no crew, but it has 900 metric tons of diesel and more than 60 thousand tons of LNG.
The Russian-flagged ship is called Arctic Metagaz and had around 30 crew members.
Two weeks ago he was attacked by drones when it was in neutral waters in the central Mediterranean, near Malta, according to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The ship will be one of the old oil tankers that clandestinely transport oil Russian around the world. A kind of ghost fleet.
After the attack, the vessel was empty of people (all of them were saved) but was left with around 900 metric tons of diesel and more than 60 thousand metric tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The numbers are from Italian authorities, who are worried – and have already warned all vessels so that stay away.
At issue is a possible environmental disaster. There are aerial surveillance images that show that the ship is very negro and with smoke, besides being inclined to one side – with a large tear on the port side and a viscous substance in the surrounding waters.
If the wind changes in that direction, the ship may be close to Italy. And, at an extraordinary meeting of the Italian Government, last week, the expression was used “gas-filled time bomb”commented a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on .
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has already warned: that vessel poses potential threats to the environment, especially if the tanker is sunk with its cargo “extremely dangerous”.
“A possible leak could cause forest fires, cryogenic clouds lethal to marine life, and extensive and long-lasting pollution of water and the atmosphere,” according to WWF. And the ship is in an area where almost all of the Mediterranean’s protected marine species are located.
The Governments of Italy and Malta are paying attention; They have already sent tugboats and anti-pollution teams near the ship. They will try to see if the tanker is either safely towed to a port or sunk at sea.
But it is a Russian company, LLC SMP Techmanagement, that is responsible for the rescue.
