On the morning of December 15, the Russian oil tanker Volgoneft 212—built in 1969 and owned by Kama Shipping LLC—loaded with fuel oil broke in half during a storm. One part of the ship sank while the second drifted in the area of the port of Kavkaz.  

While this was happening, a second tanker, the Volgoneft 239—built in 1973 and owned by Volgatransneft CJSC—was torn from its anchor and, after drifting, ran aground near the port of Taman.  

In the early morning hours of December 17, a third tanker, the Volgoneft 109—built in 1973, owned by Investkom LLC—sent a distress signal after its crew discovered a crack. It was safely towed to port, but one of its crew members later died of hypothermia as a result of the accident. According to preliminary data, about 3.7 thousand tons of fuel oil it was carrying leaked into the sea, some of which was washed up over dozens of kilometers along the Russian coast near Anapa over the course of two days. If the wind direction changes, the coast of Ukrainian Crimea may also be coated in the sludge. The fuel oil remaining in the damaged tankers could also spill if it is not pumped out.  

The three tankers were transporting a total of about 13,000 tons of fuel oil. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations division in the Krasnodar Territory, more than 700 specialists and 60 units of equipment were involved in the shore cleanup operation as of December 17. 

All three tankers were built in the 1970s to transport oil products and were each modernized in the 90s for access to seaports. However, they were designed for use on rivers and were meant to access ports at sea only during good weather. Usually, the tankers would spend winter months in port, given the risk of storms on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. Russian law enforcement is investigating why these tankers were operating in stormy winter seas, though its possible that they continued operations into winter months because of  fuel supply problems brought on by the war in Ukraine.  

A similar accident occurred in the same place in November 2007 with tankers of the same series. At that time, another series of storms damaged the tankers Volgoneft 139 and Volgoneft 123. Eleven other vessels were also impacted, four of which sank. About 1,600 tons of fuel oil spilled into the sea. Within a week, the fuel oil washed up on the shores of Ukrainian Crimea as well as on the shores of Russia on both sides of the Kerch Strait. Portions of the spill settled on the bottom, which impacted marine flora and bottom dwelling sea life—the food supply for some species of commercial fish. Fuel oil can remain in sea water for a long time without significant transformation—from a month to a year in inland seas, and up to several years in the open ocean.  

The Volgoneft tankers are not part of the shadow fleet that has sprung up to shuttle Russian fossil fuel cargos past western sanctions. Instead, they belong to Russian companies and underwent the necessary technical inspections, at least on paper. Their location and direction of travel are known and not hidden. And yet, the age of the ships, negligence during operation and bad weather led to a rather serious accident. Rescue infrastructure was located only kilometers from the accident site, but the death of a crew member and the oil spill on the shore nonetheless could not be avoided.  

Russia is currently expanding its shadow fleet for seaborne oil transportation at a rate of about 10 tankers per month. According to Bloomberg estimates, this fleet consists of about 850 vessels. Ukrainian intelligence has managed to identify 238 of them. Typically, such vessels are old, their true owners hidden behind a web of offshore shell companies, they lack cargo and liability insurance, and they can obscure their location. This creates a high risk of accidents, spills at sea and a danger to the crews. 

To date, most of the observed vessels of the Russian oil shadow fleet have been sailing from the Baltic or Black Sea ports to Asia via the Suez Canal, but several of them have passed through the Northern Sea Route. Oil product leaks have already been observed from tankers of the Russian shadow fleet off the coast of Italy, Thailand, Vietnam, and Mexico.  

If international sanctions against the passage of shadow fleet vessels along the European coast are tightened, most likely, more such vessels will go through the Northern Sea Route next year. Then the risk of accidents with oil spills in the Arctic will increase even more.  

Yet, compared to the accident in the Kerch Strait, the distances on the NSR are much greater, and the Arctic conditions are much harsher. Sea tankers carry dozens of times more oil than Volgoneft tankers, and there is significantly less rescue infrastructure in the Arctic than in the Black Sea. In September of this year, when the ship Akademik Nikolay Strakhov lost power due to an engine failure and was forced to anchor in the waters of the Kara Sea in the Arctic, it took two weeks for help to arrive. Oil pollution in Arctic waters will be longer lasting, Arctic conditions greatly slow the natural processes of oil product degradation of in water, and cleanup activities might not begin until several weeks after the accident. The Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989 showed that in those Arctic conditions, oil remained in the environment for more than 20 years, and populations of some marine mollusks take more than 50 years to recover. 

The complete control of the NSR by the Russian authorities, as well as the absence of independent regulatory bodies and organizations, could lead to delays in reporting accidents or concealing their scale—as happened before with the diesel fuel spill in Norilsk in 2020, when the leak became known only after two days.  

To reduce the risk of such accidents, as well as to lessen Russia’s financial ability to continue the war, the G7 countries and the EU need to stop importing Russian oil, to impose secondary sanctions on companies and countries that buy Russian oil and sell petroleum products from it, while reducing oil consumption and switching to a low-carbon economy.