After the oil spill in Kerch Strait: No risk of significant oil pollution threatening Bulgarian territorial waters and the coastline

The Ministry of Environment and Water (MOEW) is closely monitoring the situation caused by an oil spill near the Kerch Strait. Caretaker Minister of Environment, Petar Dimitrov, is in contact with his counterparts from Romania and Ukraine, and the Ministry has also requested information from Turkey and Georgia.

Following a severe storm in the Kerch Strait, a disaster occurred involving two Russian tankers, one of which has already sunk.

"The tankers are Russian, and so far the Russian authorities have not disclosed the amount of oil products spilled into the sea. However, based on the tankers' capacity, it is estimated that several thousand tonnes of oil products may have been spilled," stated the Ministry.

The incident is similar to the one in November 2007, when several tankers sank in the strait and spilled 1,300 tonnes of oil immediately after the incident, and more than 8,000 tonnes in total.

Some of the oil pollution that will get into the Black Sea are likely to remain circulating in eddies. There is no risk of significant oil pollution reaching the western part of the Black Sea and endangering Bulgarian territorial waters and the Bulgarian coast.

MOEW's Black Sea Basin Directorate has been carrying out regular monitoring of marine waters since the start of the war in Ukraine and the Nova Kakhovka dam incident, including for oil and petroleum products’ spills, and an emergency survey will be carried out if necessary.

Scientists from the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology are assessing incoming information, including satellite imagery, and are on standby to use computer numerical models to forecast the spread of oil spills, the Ministry also said.

According to Associate Professor Nikolay Valchev, a hydrodynamics expert from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), strong westerly winds with gusts up to 25 m/s are expected over the Black Sea in the coming days. These conditions could lead to the formation of a local circulation (anticyclonic eddy), which is expected to confine the flow of pollutants from the Kerch Strait to a relatively narrow area in the northwestern part of the basin. This will likely delay and limit the spread of contaminated waters toward Ukraine’s waters, the Ministry of Environment said.

Researchers from several institutions are working on more detailed forecasts, and MOEW will provide public updates as new information becomes available.

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