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At Least 11 Volgoneft Type Tankers Went to Sea With the Same Violations as Those That Sank in December

They offloaded hundreds of thousands of tons of petroleum products onto vessels involved in exporting from Russia in circumvention of sanctions

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Date
28 Jan 2025
At Least 11 Volgoneft Type Tankers Went to Sea With the Same Violations as Those That Sank in December
Photo: Vitaly Timkiv / Sputnik / imago / Scanpix / LETA

On December 15, the Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 tankers were wrecked at the exit of the Kerch Strait into the Black Sea. They were supposed to deliver four thousand tons of fuel oil each to the FIRN storage tanker in the transshipment area of the port of Kavkaz, but they could not withstand the storm. This led to one of the largest environmental catastrophes in Russia in the 21st century. As discovered by IStories, both tankers were not allowed to go to sea in December, and one of them was operating with expired documents.

IStories analyzed port data and found that the sunken Volgonefts were not the only tankers of this type that went to sea in violation of operating rules.

In addition to them, during 2024 and the first month of 2025, another 11 Volgoneft tankers went to sea during the period when their classification certificates — documents that confirm that the vessel meets the established technical standards and requirements — prohibited it. This is every fourth vessel operating on the route. During the specified period, at least 44 Volgonefts were unloaded at the Kavkaz port.

At least 7 Volgoneft tankers not only went to sea in violation of deadlines, but also followed the same route as the sunken vessels: from Rostov-on-Don to the transshipment area of the Kavkaz port in the Black Sea. Four tankers had permission to return from the Kavkaz port to Rostov-on-Don without cargo after November under the responsibility of the captain and the management company. However, none of these documents authorize the route from Rostov-on-Don to Kavkaz with thousands of tons of petroleum products on board. ‎

Among the violating tankers is the Volgoneft-109, which sent a distress signal on December 17 and was towed to an anchorage with a crack in its hull. Like the sunken Volgoneft-212, it went to sea with expired documents.

The documents of the Volgoneft-109 tanker expired at the end of November
The documents of the Volgoneft-109 tanker expired at the end of November

Another tanker, Volgoneft-141, just a day after the accident and oil spill, unloaded more than four thousand tons of fuel oil onto a storage tanker at the port of Kavkaz anchorage. It departed from Rostov-on-Don on December 13, although the certification certificate prohibited it from entering the open sea after November.

The tanker Volgoneft-141 was not allowed to go to the open sea in December
The tanker Volgoneft-141 was not allowed to go to the open sea in December

What violations of tanker operating rules can lead to

The entry into the sea of each of the eleven violating Volgoneft tankers could have resulted in a catastrophe, believes Evgeny Simonov, an environmentalist and expert of the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Work Group. “Even if the tankers have permission [to enter the sea in winter], this means absolutely nothing. The combination of advanced age and traditionally negligent operation to the point of wear and tear leads to the fact that every Volgoneft’s entry into the sea is a risk. And every entry outside the permitted period is a recipe for disaster, to which the authorities have turned a blind eye,” says the expert.

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Volgoneft tankers should not have been operating at sea transporting heavy oil and petroleum products since 2008; Gennady Yegorov, head of the Marine Engineering Bureau, wrote about this 11 years ago. According to his calculations, by 2012, the accident rate of Volgoneft tankers had approximately doubled — to 4-5 disasters per 1000 vessels. Yegorov concludes that the safe transportation of petroleum products on river-sea tankers is only possible with the construction of new vessels.

Meanwhile, half of the Volgoneft tankers (23 vessels) that unloaded at the Kavkaz port in 2024 and January 2025 were built more than fifty years ago: the oldest of them is 58 years old, the youngest is 42 years old.

The December disaster was not the first one. In November 2007, due to a storm in the Kerch Strait, the Volgoneft-139 tanker broke in two, and several other vessels sank. 6.8 thousand tons of granulated sulfur and up to two thousand tons of fuel oil spilled into the water. But the Volgoneft tankers continued to operate in the open sea in dangerous conditions.

Volunteers are still collecting fuel oil from the beaches of Anapa. Photo taken on 21.12.2024
Volunteers are still collecting fuel oil from the beaches of Anapa. Photo taken on 21.12.2024
Photo: Alexey Maishev / Sputnik / imago / Scanpix / LETA

How the environmental disaster is connected to Russia’s shadow fleet

Russian officials claim that the fuel oil spill is unrelated to the export of petroleum products from Russia and that the tankers were transporting cargo domestically.

Port records prove that this is not the case. Throughout 2024 and January 2025, Volgoneft-type tankers, whose documents were analyzed by IStories, made almost 200 voyages from Rostov-on-Don to the Kavkaz port. They delivered 800,000 tons of petroleum products to storage tankers, more than 80% of which were unloaded onto seagoing tankers under foreign flags.

The largest share — 280,000 tons of fuel oil — went to the seagoing tanker FIRN, which sails under the flag of Panama, according to port documents. It was to this tanker that the sunken Volgoneft tankers were carrying fuel oil, and it was also where other tankers, which were at sea in violation of their operational deadlines, were unloading. FIRN is listed as part of the Russian shadow fleet, according to the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine and Greenpeace. Ecologist Evgeny Simonov drew attention to this.

FIRN’s deadweight tonnage is only 160,000 tons. This means that during its stay, it not only received fuel oil but also transferred it to other tankers. IStories was able to reliably confirm one case of such a transfer. In October 2024, the tanker MUM took 90,000 tons of oil from FIRN and, according to port documents, transported it to Greece. In January 2025, MUM was placed under U.S. sanctions, as were two other tankers, TRIUMPH and NS SILVER, onto which the Volgoneft tankers were directly offloaded. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the tanker MUM entered a Russian port where “petroleum products are constantly sold at a price significantly exceeding the $60 limit.”‎

As follows from port documents, FIRN has been in the unloading zone of the Kavkaz port since July 2024 and remains there to this day. Prior to this, it had called at other Russian ports.

More than 200,000 tons of fuel oil from the Volgoneft tankers were loaded onto the COATLICUE tanker, which is registered in the East African state of Djibouti and is also listed in the shadow fleet list compiled by Greenpeace. The tanker arrived from Turkey and was stationed in the Russian port from January to August, after which it likely returned to the port of Istanbul.

All 11 foreign tankers onto which the Volgoneft tankers unloaded are listed in various shadow fleet lists, and three have already been subjected to European and American sanctions.

Featuring Egor Feoktistov

Editor: Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya

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