Ukraine Weekly Sees Smuggling As Contributing Factor in Black Sea Shipwrecks
Mass smuggling contributed to the recent contamination of the Black Sea when several ships sank or ran aground in storms, spilling fuel oil, an analytical weekly has written. Ecologists are quoted as saying that they had long warned of such a disaster since cargoes are routinely reloaded from ship to ship in the Kerch Strait, rather than in ports, in order to avoid state control and port dues. The article quotes former Emergencies Minister Davyd Zhvaniya and former Crimean prosecutor Viktor Shemchuk alleging that this activity includes smuggling, though they were unable to give estimates of its volume. About 150 vessels had amassed in the Kerch Strait area for reloading at the time of the disaster. The following is an excerpt from the article by Valentyna Samar entitled “Some are on the bottom, some are in the know, and some get a cut…” (ellipsis as published) published in the Ukrainian weekly Zerkalo Nedeli on 17 November; subheadings have been inserted editorially:
Nobody can remember such a massive shipwreck in the Black Sea. There is nothing to compare it with, except with times of war. Last Sunday [11 November] six Russian ships were wrecked in a single day in the Kerch Strait. The wind strength in the strait exceeded 30 metres per second. And the height of the waves reached four to five metres. About 100 vessels had amassed in the southern part of the Kerch Strait. On the Saturday, a storm warning was issued twice by the Kerch port service. However, not all of them put to sea – over 50 vessels remained in the strait. At dawn the oil tanker Volgoneft- 139, carrying 4,000 t of fuel oil, broke up. According to official data, 1,200 t was shed into the water. Four hours later the Volnogorsk bulk-carrier sank with sulphur on board. Another two bulk- carriers transporting sulphur – the Nakhichevan and the Kovel, which had been at anchorage, sank. On board each of them was 2,000-2,500 t of sulphur. The bulk-carrier Hadj Izmail sank off the coast of Sevastopol carrying scrap metal. Near Cape Mehan in the region of Sudak the bulk-carrier Vera Voloshina ran aground. It was carrying agricultural machinery. Altogether six vessels ran aground and another two were damaged. The Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry saved 43 people. Over the week it proved possible to find the bodies of three seamen who were identified. As of midday on Friday [16 November], 20 people were missing.
The oil tanker that broke up presented the greatest danger of pollution of the water area. Both Ukrainian and Russian ministers claim that the sulphur will lie on the bottom in hermetic containers. Emergencies Minister Nestor Shufrych said that Ukrainian divers had examined the containers – the lids were not damaged and there was no danger of leakage of the sulphur. According to official data, there were 4,077 t of fuel oil in the hold of the Volgoneft- 139. About 1,000 t flowed towards the Russian coast and over 300 t towards Ukraine’s island Tuzla Spit. According to ecological scientists, one tonne of oil is capable of spreading over 10-12 sq km, and everything living under that film will die. On Thursday [15 November], the Ukrainian Environment Ministry reported that the quantity of petroleum products in the Kerch Strait exceeded by between three and 40 times the standards set for waters designated for fishing.
According to calculations by Rosgidromet [Russian Hydro- meteorological Service], the greatest concentration of fuel oil has been established in the area of the Chushka spit between Kavkaz port and the village of Ilyich. A fifty-fold excess of the permitted norm was noted in precisely that region. Not a single serious expert is yet prepared to forecast the scale of the consequences of the fuel oil spill. And the amounts of losses to the region’s ecology that Kiev and Kerch, Moscow and Novorossiysk are already naming are considered premature, and hence unreliable.
It is a big ecological catastrophe, whose consequences will be felt for at least 10 years, says Prof Viktor Tarasenko, head of the Ecology and Peace association. Because an entire biological chain has been destroyed. After all, it is a blow to the plankton, to fish stocks, to migratory and native birds. The fuel oil in the cold water is now sinking to the bottom, but in spring it will warm up and start rising, covering the surface with a film. The waves will bring it ashore and that will be a blow to the beaches and to the holiday season both in Crimea and in Russia. It is a blow to the economy and to man, who can no longer use all the potential of Crimea. It’s a great disaster for at least a decade.
[Passage omitted: quoting Russian environmentalists, the Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers; mutual accusations between Ukrainian and Russian officials; President Viktor Yushchenko speaking in Jerusalem and Shufrych on the disaster]
Build-up of vessels for transshipment
A catastrophe on such a scale had long ago been predicted by ecologists. And it had been voiced aloud dozens of times. The point is that about 150 vessels were not simply amassing in the southern part of the Kerch Strait. The point is that transshipment of cargo from one ship to another is carried out in that place. Ship owners and captains save good money by transhipping cargo not in port, but directly in the strait.
“We several times drew it to the attention of the authorities that transshipment of goods by barbaric methods in the area of the strait must not be allowed,” Viktor Tarasenko says. “After all, dozens, sometimes hundreds of vessels amass there. Naturally, the economy dictates the desire to save money on reloading and not pay customs and port dues, but in the final analysis they’ve lost everything, the whole Black Sea basin. We have stated on several occasions: instil order, reach agreement at the level of Ukraine and Russia, ban these barbaric methods of reloading that have existed for several years now. We must develop the infrastructure of moorings and ports; we must have a normal, civilized system of reloading. Then there will be nothing like this. After all, even in a standard situation the water area gets polluted when sulphur and other materials are loaded loose – both liquid and dry. It’s all visible from space – these huge regions of pollution all over the north-east of the Black Sea area and the strait. And now, in storm conditions, there is also a sudden ejection of a huge amount of fuel oil.”
The director of YUGNIIRO [scientific research institute], Borys Panov, also believes that transshipment at sea was the main precondition for the tragedy: “We have said dozens of times that this should not be permitted! And now the bomb has burst, if you please. After all, had there been none of this transshipment, no- one would have drowned,” Panov said in an interview with Zerkalo Nedeli. “Why had 150 ships amassed there? Because the reloading of millions of tonnes of all sorts of cargo goes on there. Both Ukrainian and Russian vessels go there in order to avoid paying port dues, not to go through the relevant checks and so on. Of course, both border troops and customs officers go there and make checks, and we shoot film clips there from time to time, but until there was an accident, nobody reacted particularly.”
Transshipment at sea includes smuggling
Apart from ecological considerations, there is another very important aspect to the theme of non-port transshipment, about which Ukrainian officials are keeping silent for some reason. The only person to have stated it publicly is [MP and former Emergencies Minister] Davyd Zhvaniya. During the “That’s what I think” talk show [on Ukraine's One Plus One TV], he named smuggling as the reason for the popularity of transshipment of millions of tonnes of cargo at sea, a reason known to everyone in Crimea. However, he did not cite specific examples. And nobody will be able to do that reliably: you’re not a thief until you’re caught.
The former Crimean prosecutor, Viktor Shemchuk, has confirmed to Zerkalo Nedeli that the problem exists. “Everyone knows that anything you can imagine is being reloaded there – goods with which you simply wouldn’t poke your nose into port – from chemicals to light petroleum products. But I can’t say anything specific about the volumes of smuggling. The customs and border troop services have to carry out monitoring there. However, to my memory, no monitoring agency has sent a single piece of material about any breaches of legislation regarding transshipment at sea. So, I can’t say who is in the know and who is getting a cut of the profits.”
Complete lack of monitoring of Kerch Strait
Yes, Ukrainian ministers are right in saying that until the question of the border is decided, Russian vessels are sailing freely in the channel, and even warnings from the captain of the port Krym are merely a recommendation for them. Yes, Ukraine cannot yet unilaterally introduce the same rules for shipping as apply in the Bosporus. But matters of ecology off its coast – that’s another matter, if you don’t mind.
The most horrifying thing, Borys Panov says, is the fact that the “Kerch Strait is unmonitorable. It does not form part of any regular monitoring programme. There are ecological networks in Ukraine. Our institute has proposed three or four times to bring control of the Kerch Strait into a monitoring network as the most important trans- border corridor linking the Black and Azov seas with all migration routes. There was no reaction. I think that the reason here is also money, of which there are only peanuts there, and the main executor – the Nature Ministry [presumably Environmental Protection Ministry is meant] – did not want to share it with other departments.”
Borys Panov recalls how, after the epic saga of the Tuzla dyke [built by Russia towards Tuzla Island in 2003, to Ukrainian protests], [former President] Leonid Kuchma signed a decree on an annual cycle for monitoring the Kerch Strait. “The decision was taken in three areas: regulation of communications routes in the strait, i.e. there was an attempt to instil order in shipping in the channel, engineering protection of Tuzla Island (the Crimean prosecutor’s office is still looking to find where the money went – author), and the third aspect is annual monitoring, which was not carried out, because not a single kopeck of money was allocated. Or nobody knows about it. What we have as a result is that catastrophes gobble up everything. We work to eliminate the consequences of the accidents. We earn money, and accidents destroy everything. Industry is developing but catastrophes destroy everything,” Borys Panov says.
But the saddest thing is that even now, after such a disaster, leading scientists (and the YUGNIIRO is an institute with a world name) are not being brought in to study the situation. “There is a commission that, as I understand, applies to the people that it needs to. Ecologists from the Nature Ministry, incidentally, in private conversation also complain that there is no freedom of action. There is no operational monitoring. What is more, there is no full and reliable information either on our side or on the Russian side. There are no conclusions of specialists – just some talk. For that reason, when journalists ask the institute to comment on the consequences of the accident, I cannot say anything to the public, because it is impossible today to determine the level of this man-made accident (I won’t yet use the word catastrophe),” the institute’s director believes.
Scientists are also making demands to the authorities seriously and professionally to study the problem of man-made stress in the strait – and it is now truly enormous. There is the oil terminal in Kavkaz port, the petrochemicals terminal (possibly for ammonia in future) on Cape Zheleznyy Rog, the negative effect of the load from the dyke that the Russians built towards Tuzla, the constantly arising theme of the construction of maybe a bridge, maybe a tunnel through the strait, plus uncontrolled shipping, plus the development of oil deposits on the south Kerch platform… [ellipsis as published] And all this is with our known level of control. Where will it burst tomorrow?
Originally published by Zerkalo Nedeli, Kiev, in Russian 17 Nov 07; pp 1, 2.
(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.