Oil Spill Near Russia's Novorossiysk 400,000 Times Larger Than Reported, Satellite Images Show

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The area of the oil spill near Russia's Novorossiysk has turned out to be 400,000 times larger than initially reported by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, as it totals 80 square kilometres, according to satellite images analyzed by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"The spill is much larger than it was declared, as at the moment of the radar survey the oil pollution area neared 80 square kilometers. On August 8, the oil slick stretched 19 kilometers from the coast into the open sea," the Space Research Institute said in a statement.

Scientists of the Space Research Institute's Institute of Oceanology analyzed the radar image taken by the Sentinel-1 satellite on 8 August.

A storm caused the spill to expand, but wind blowing in from the coast saved the coastal areas from pollution, Andrey Kostianoy, chief researcher at the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said.

"If the [oil spill] had been washed ashore, it would be much worse. We would have to clean up the shore," Kostianoy explained.

The World Wildlife Fund Russia estimated the scale of the oil spill at 100 tonnes, with 7 kilometers of the coastline polluted near Abrau Durso. WWF Russia said that oil skimming will take up to two weeks.

The oil spill was registered o 7 August when oil was pumped onto the Greek oil tanker Minerva Symphony from a loading device of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which assessed the spill area to be around 200 square meters.