The Russian city of Tuapse continues to extinguish the fire after a drone attack on Rosneft’s oil refinery on the night of 28 April – Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov has arrived in the region.
At a press conference at the operational headquarters of the Krasnodar region of the Russian Federation, he said that the measures taken to eliminate the consequences of the oil spill were insufficient.
“All the measures that are directly taking place on the territory of the base, these measures at the moment, perhaps, are still insufficient,” Kurenkov is quoted by Interfax news agency.
At the same time, in the Operstab’s Telegram channel, in the above quote, Kurenkov says the exact opposite: “forces and means are enough to eliminate the threat.”
In the morning, regional authorities reported on the localisation of the fire. The operative headquarters said that burning streams of oil were no longer flowing through the streets of Tuapse.
In order to contain emissions into the sea, five kilometres of booms will be moved to the area, said Governor Veniamin Kondratiev. Now nine rows of river booms, according to official information, are set up on the Tuapse River, which runs directly near the damaged refinery.
Divers are beginning to survey the seabed. On the shore, 300 people are engaged in cleaning up the contaminated soil and water and fuel oil mixture – the Operational Headquarters does not specify how many of them are volunteers.
The Tuapse oil refinery was hit by drones again on the night of 28 April, the third time this month. As a result of the fire, some of the burning oil products spilled out onto the road. The AFU General Staff confirmed the strike on the Tuapse oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region on 28 April.
Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that another fire at the Tuapse oil refinery could have “environmental consequences” but “there is no serious threat”.
Previous attacks on this refinery have burned out or damaged more than half of the fuel tanks in the facility’s tank farm, but there was no damage to the refining facilities.
The multi-day fire caused oil to leak into the sea and the city experienced several “oil rain” events.
The Tuapse refinery is owned by Rosneft and is the only Russian refinery of its type on the Black Sea coast. The refinery is of strategic importance for the Russian Federation: it is a key hub for supplying fuel to the Russian military grouping and the main terminal for exporting oil products across the Black Sea.