TRIPOLI – Libya’s Nationwide Oil Company (NOC) stated on March 21 that it had contracted a specialist firm to deal with a broken Russian tanker carrying LNG that’s drifting in direction of the Libyan coast.
The Arctic Metagaz can be towed to a Libyan port, NOC stated in an announcement, including that the nation’s oil amenities weren’t liable to air pollution.
Italy, France, Spain and 6 different southern EU members wrote to the European Fee final week warning the tanker posed “an imminent and critical danger of a significant ecological catastrophe”.
Libya’s NOC stated the environmental threat “may be managed to a really massive extent” and that an emergency room had been set as much as coordinate operations with the related authorities.
The vessel, carrying LNG from the Arctic port of Murmansk, has been unmanned since early March, when Russia’s Transport Ministry stated it was hit by Ukrainian naval drones. Preliminary stories stated the vessel had sunk within the Mediterranean, however that proved to not be the case.
In current days, it had been left uncontrolled after struggling harm off Libya’s coast in current days and was transferring regularly in direction of the shore because of wind and waves, stated NOC, including that the emergency contract was organized by Mellitah Oil and Fuel in cooperation with Italy’s Eni.
An Italian official stated on March 20 that the tanker is estimated to be carrying 450 metric tonnes of heavy oil and 250 tonnes of diesel as gas provides, and an “unsure” amount of LNG, which can have partly regasified and dispersed. REUTERS