Ageing Russian single-hulled oil tankers are threatening to cause a catastrophe in the Baltic sea, President Vladimir Putin has been warned by his neighbours and the European Union.
The Finnish prime minister Anneli Jaatteenmaki, and Margot Wallstrom, the EU environment commissioner, said yesterday they had both demanded the Russians use safer, double-hulled vessels and better-trained crews, but so far their pleas had been ignored.
The Finns have become so alarmed that they have ordered four special vessels to deal with oil spills.
The two women were speaking yesterday at a symposium of scientists, politicians, and churchmen organised by Bartholomew, Patriarch of the Orthodox church of Constantinople, to look at pollution dangers to the Baltic.
The greatest fear is a collision at sea in the shallow, narrow Gulf of Finland. Earlier this week a Chinese tanker carrying 60 000 tons of fertiliser sank after a collision with another vessel in daylight in clear weather.
Each day 32 ferries heading for Estonia crisscross the path of the 100 000-ton tankers carrying heavy crude to European ports from a new oil port near St Petersburg.
Cashing in on higher oil prices, Russia is aiming to double its current output of 60-million tons in three years.
Wallstrom said: ”Russia must stop using old single-hulled tankers to transport oil and chemicals. We have had talks with Putin… but so far Russia has failed to take action.”
Jaatteenmaki said she had taken the opportunity of St Petersburg’s 300th anniversary celebrations last week to warn President Putin of the dangers Russia’s oil traffic was posing to its Baltic neighbours.
Following the sinking of the tanker Prestige off Spain earlier this year the EU has brought forward regulations insisting on the use of double-hulled tankers by 2010, but the Russians say they do not have to do anything until the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) says so. The IMO has set a date of 2015.
The Finns want the Baltic declared a specially protected area, banning single-hulled tankers, but only the IMO can impose such conditions.
The Russians cancelled a visit to St Petersburg planned by the symposium to coincide with World Environment Day last Thursday, partly, the Patriarch said, because the government feared criticism of its oil transport policies. – Guardian Unlimited Â