BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

27/03/2007

Diesel Fuel Spill Contained in Northern Belarus

Text of report in English by Belarusian news agency Belapan

Minsk, 26 March: Belarusian emergency management squads have managed to contain a diesel fuel spill that polluted the River Western Dvina and its tributary in Vitsebsk Region last week.

Some 90 per cent of all diesel fuel that leaked from a hole in a Russian-owned pipeline has already been removed from the rivers, the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry said.

"It's so far impossible to estimate how much was leaked, this will be done by experts, but these are not thousands tonnes as some media outlets reported," the ministry's spokesman told Belapan.

According to preliminary estimates, roughly 100 tonnes of diesel fuel was released into the Western Dvina, which flows into the Baltic Sea, and the River Ulla. A 15-kilometre section of the latter was covered with the oil spill after the accident.

By Monday morning [26 March], patches of diesel fuel from the spill floated from the scene of the accident near Beshankovichy [Vitsebsk Region] to Kraslava District in Latvia more than 150 kilometres downstream, the Baltic country's LETA news agency reported. However, the damage proved far less extensive that the Latvian authorities had feared.

Lyavontsiy Kharuzhyk, Belarus's minister of natural resources and environmental protection, was expected to arrive at the site of the leak on 26 March.

The spill was said to have not led to any accidents involving human fatalities or injuries.

The leak-hit pipeline carries petroleum products to Latvia's seaport of Ventspils.

Source:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/881196/diesel_fuel_spill_contained_in_northern_belarus/index.html?source=r_science