The area of an oil spill near Novorossiysk, Russia. Photo: Agentstvo

A giant oil slick that leaked into the Black Sea near the port city of Novorossiysk in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region on Friday is nearing the shores of the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, according to Greenpeace.

Dmitry Markin, an expert at Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe, told Russian investigative news outlet IStories on Wednesday that the spill demonstrated that profiting from oil sales was “more important for the current Russian regime than the safety of nature and its citizens.”

The oil spill, which took place at a marine terminal belonging to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) near Novorossiysk on Friday, was the twelfth known leak off Russia’s Black Sea coast this year, according to independent news outlet Agentstvo.

The leak is also the largest since the wreck of the Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239 tankers in December, each reportedly carrying over 4,000 tonnes of oil, Agentstvo added.

The CPC said simply that “an amount of oil came to the surface while being loaded via hoses onto a tanker”. Satellite images studied by experts showed that in the first 72 hours of the spill, a slick measuring 50km2 had moved from Novorossiysk along the coast and was approaching the Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from Russia.

Markin said that this meant that the statements made by Russian environmental regulator Rosprirodnazor and the CPC insisting that the oil spill had been localised and posed no danger of spreading were therefore false.

“Another oil spill off the coast clearly shows that in Russia environmental safety is increasingly being sacrificed for the sake of the oil industry,” Markin told IStories, accusing the authorities of “turning a blind eye to violations and helping oil companies cover up incidents” and noting that environmental monitoring efforts had weakened sharply amid the increase in political oppression in the country.