Libya’s National Oil Corporation said on Saturday that it had contracted a specialist company to handle a damaged Russian tanker carrying LNG that is drifting towards the Libyan coast.
The Arctic Metagaz would be towed to a Libyan port, NOC said in a statement, adding that the country’s oil facilities were not at risk of pollution.
Italy, France, Spain and six other southern EU members wrote to the European Commission last week, warning the tanker posed “an imminent and serious risk of a major ecological disaster”.
Libya’s NOC said the environmental threat “can be controlled to a very large extent” and that an emergency room had been set up to coordinate operations with the relevant authorities.
The vessel, carrying LNG from the Arctic port of Murmansk, has been unmanned since early March, when Russia’s Transport Ministry said it was hit by Ukrainian naval drones.
It had been left out of control after suffering damage off Libya’s coast in recent days and was moving gradually towards the shore as a result of wind and waves, said NOC, adding that the emergency contract was arranged through Mellitah Oil and Gas in cooperation with Italy’s Eni.
An Italian official said on Friday that the tanker is estimated to be carrying 450 metric tons of heavy oil and 250 tons of diesel as fuel supplies, and an “uncertain” quantity of LNG, which may have partly regasified and dispersed.
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