On January 21, 2019, two tankers carrying hydrocarbon fuel caught fire in the Black Sea at the entrance to the Kerch Strait. The ships were sailing under the flag of Tanzania, there were citizens of India and Turkey on board. As a result of the emergency, many sailors were killed or missing, and the causes of the accident are being investigated.
State of emergency in the area of the Kerch Strait
An emergency on board the cargo ships occurred on the evening of January 21 in the Black Sea in neutral waters, 16 miles off the coast of the Krasnodar Territory. At the entrance to the Kerch Strait anchored under the flags of "Tanzania" were tankers "Maestro" and "Kandy" (formerly called "Venice"). Suddenly, an explosion first occurred on one of the ships, then a fire started. Eyewitnesses - sailors of a ship passing nearby - reported this on land in a timely manner.
The fire quickly spread from one tanker to another, while the affected ships themselves did not give distress signals. In an attempt to escape the fire, the sailors "Maestro" and "Kandy" jumped into the water. According to Rosmorrechflot, 32 people were present on the two tankers before the start of the incident, all of them citizens of Turkey and India.
As of January 24, 2018, the ships of the Black Sea Fleet managed to rescue 12 people from the Maestro and Kandy in distress and send the victims on different ships to the port of Kerch. In addition, a dozen bodies of the dead were found, the rest of the sailors are listed as missing.
The situation was complicated by the fact that it is dangerous to extinguish burning fuel in traditional ways. The rescue operation was retrained into a search one, since the chances of finding survivors in a terrible fire on January 22 were reduced to zero.
A criminal case has been initiated under article 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (causing death by negligence), the press service of the Investigative Committee of Russia reports. On January 24, the tanker "Kandy", on which the fuel was burning out, began to be carried to the Russian coast, and the ship "Spasatel Demidov" took it in tow.
Possible causes of fire
According to experts, the main alleged cause of fire on tankers in the Kerch Strait is a violation of safety measures during the operation of transferring fuel from ship to ship. According to media reports, the tankers left the port of Temryuk in the Kuban, and together they could transport more than 4.5 thousand tons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
The experts noted the unsatisfactory condition of the tankers themselves, made back in 1990-1992. In addition, among the reasons for the emergency at sea, experts call the insufficient training of workers in the maritime transport. The editor-in-chief of the "Marine Bulletin" Mikhail Voitenko, whose words are reported by "RIA Novosti", believes that "qualified seamen do not work on such ships."
Fire at sea after US sanctions
The root cause of the disaster in the Black Sea was the US sanctions, some media sources are sure. Representatives of LPG-terminal "Maktren-Nafta" prohibited the ships "Maestro" and "Kandy" from entering the port of Temryuk. As a result, tankers have started a very risky transfer of LPG at sea, Reuters reports.
According to the agency, the ban followed due to fears of restrictive measures by America against the port, sellers and consumers of fuel. Ships in disaster in the Black Sea are on the US Treasury's black list for transporting "black gold" to Syrian ports in 2016-2018.
The press service of Rosmorrechflot stressed that the port in the Kuban could not refuse to serve the damaged tankers. However, experts believe that the parking lot of Kandy and Maestro before the fire was illegal. The transfer of liquefied petroleum gas from vessel to vessel was carried out for “cargo laundering” so that the port's role as a transshipment base would be disguised, M. Voitenko believes.
Thus, a fire on ships in the Kerch Strait region, which claimed the lives of more than a dozen sailors, can be caused by a combination of reasons. This is a violation of safety precautions in the process of transferring LPG from tanker to tanker, and the poor condition of the vessels, and insufficient qualifications of seafarers. It is possible that the state of emergency is the result of Washington's sanctions policy against the players of the oil market. It could lead to a "gray scheme" of tankers, during which something went wrong.
