Server Rift

Norwegian fjords miraculously escaped environmental disaster

On Friday evening, the Cyprus-flagged tanker M/S Server sank off the coast of Western Norway. During a storm, for an unknown reason, the ship hit the reefs and split in half. All 25 crew members were taken to land using helicopters. Although the stern of the tanker sank, the bow of the Server remained afloat and was towed into relatively calm waters. According to official authorities, 290 tons of petroleum products got into the water.

We can confidently say that the Norwegians are very lucky. Firstly, the Server was empty: the ship was heading to Murmansk, where it was supposed to pick up oil. On board the tanker there were only 657 tons of fuel necessary for passage to the Russian port. Secondly, during the destruction and sinking of the ship, only one of the tanks was breached. The remaining tanks with petroleum products, according to Ane Eide Cheros, a representative of the Norwegian Coastal Administration, were located in the bow of the Server and remained undamaged.

But 290 tons was enough to stain the shore of the nearby island of Fedje. However, the damage to the environment could be greater if, for example, an oil spill reached a bird sanctuary located on the coast. But officials say so far there has been no reported contamination in the area. And the Norwegians, despite the storm, are diligently cleaning up the oil spill at the disaster site. It is estimated that complete cleanup may take about six months. In this situation, Server captain Andreas Dimarakis could only thank the helicopter pilots for saving the crew and, as RIA Novosti reports, apologized to the Norwegians for the damage caused to the coastal ecology.

At the same time, the collapse of the Server is unlikely to be included in the annals of the largest tanker disasters. During the most notorious incidents of this kind, hundreds of thousands of tons of oil spilled into the sea, and economic and environmental damage was estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. The last major oil disaster at sea was the sinking of the Panamanian tanker Prestige off the northern coast of Spain in November 2002. There were 77 thousand tons of fuel oil on board, most of which ended up in the waters of the Atlantic and settled on nearby beaches. At that time, this disaster was called the largest in the history of the region, although, for example, in 1978, 223 thousand tons of oil spilled into the sea from the tanks of the Amoco Cadiz tanker, which crashed off the coast of Brittany.

Vladimir DZAGUTO