(Reuters) – Russian rescue workers have removed more than 86,000 metric tons of contaminated sand and dirt on both sides of the Kerch Strait after an oil spill in the Black Sea last month, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said on Saturday.
Oil leaked from two old tankers that were hit by a storm on December 15. One of them sank and the other ran aground.
More than 10,000 people work to extract sticky, foul-smelling fuel oil from the sandy beaches in and around Anapa, a popular summer resort. Environmental groups have reported deaths of dolphins, porpoises and seabirds.
The Emergencies Ministry said on the Telegram messaging app that oil-contaminated soil had been collected in Russia's wider Kuban region and in the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Kiev in 2014.
The Ministry published video clips showing dozens of workers wearing protective suits loading bags of dirt onto the diggers and others scraping dirt from the sand with shovels.
The Russian Transport Ministry said this week that experts had found that about 2,400 metric tons of petroleum products had leaked into the sea, a smaller leak than initially expected.
When the disaster struck, state media reported that the two stricken tankers, both over 50 years old, were carrying about 9,200 metric tons (62,000 barrels) of petroleum products in total.
The spill involved M100 grade heavy fuel oil which solidifies at 25 °C (77 °F) and, unlike other petroleum products, does not float to the surface but sinks to the bottom or remains suspended in the water column.
