Space Imagery Once Again Detected Presence of Petroleum Products in the Kerch Strait

14 August 2008

The scheduled periodic scanning of the Kerch Strait detected new evidence of the Kerch Strait area pollution with petroleum products leaking from the sunken forward part of the Volgoneft-139 tanker.

As a result of processing the RADARSAT-1 radar image received by SCANEX RDC Moscow Center on August 6, 2008 the specialists discovered a threadlike tail of oil pollution around 21 km long and 3.66 squire km large.

The front end of the slick starts of directly from the point of likely whereabouts of the forward section of the sunken Volgoneft-139 tanker with respect to coordinates of N45’12.75” and E36’ 31.89”. Due to daily wind and current direction changes the tail has a complex curved shape and drifts towards the Taman Peninsula.

The image clearly detects the other two slicks of pollution with the total area of around 2.1 sq. km., which presumably formed due to oil leak from the Volgoneft-139 tanker but separated from the primary tail about 1-2 days ago.

Insignificant film contamination possibly caused by petroleum products is also noticeable along the Taman Peninsula coast. Hydrometeorological conditions as of the time of imagery on August 6 including west wind with velocity of 3-5 m/s contributed to detection of the pollution.

ScanEx Center will continue regular monitoring of the Black and Caspian seas area condition accompanied with real-time reception and processing of RADARSAT-1 and ENVISAT-1 data.

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Source: ScanEx