Oil spill threatens Danube Delta environment area

An oil slick from a sunken freighter is moving towards the Romanian coast and threatening an environmentally protected area on the Danube Delta, the Ukrainian Environment Ministry reported Thursday. According to officials, the oil from the sunken freighter Nikolay Bauman is, so far, covering an area of more than five kilometres. The nearby Ukrainian ports of Ust-Dunajsk and Izmayil do not have the necessary equipment and personnel to deal with the disaster and rough seas are also interfering with efforts to control the spill. The Ukrainian state’s attorney has pursuing criminal proceedings against the owners of the Moldavan-flagged freighter, which sank on March 6 with a load of 2,700 tonnes of cement, three and a half tonnes of diesel fuel and a half tonne of petroleum.