For weeks, a huge, unmanned Russian fuel tanker has been drifting aimlessly in the Mediterranean Sea, after its crew abandoned ship following a drone attack, according to the Russian government.
The 900-foot ship has a gaping hole in its green hull, aerial footage shows, and in the words of a senior Italian official, Alfredo Mantovano, “it is an environmental time bomb that threatens to cause serious damage throughout the surrounding area of the Mediterranean Sea.”
Yet amid growing outcry, no one is rushing to take responsibility for the ship’s fate.
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Italian authorities said on Wednesday that the ship was approaching Libya, but warned that Italy could not monitor it closely because it was not in Italy’s national waters.
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Libyan authorities warned on Wednesday that ships and oil platforms off the Libyan coast should look out for the listing ship, but announced no concrete response.
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Russia has blamed the attack on Ukraine and called on Mediterranean countries to deal with the fallout.
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Ukraine, which has sometimes attacked Russian tankers to harm Russia’s war economy, has not commented on the ship.
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Malta has said it has a contingency plan, but stopped short of saying if or when it would be enacted.
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Nine European countries have written to the European Union, calling on it to coordinate a plan to avert “imminent and serious risk of a major ecological disaster in the heart of the Union’s maritime space,” according to a letter seen by The New York Times.
None have commandeered the vessel.
The tanker, called the Arctic Metagaz, has been adrift since the attack on March 3, according to the Russian foreign ministry. It was carrying at least 700 tons of fuel and some liquid natural gas, the ministry later added.
The ship’s name was changed last year, according to online ship records. Before the change, several Western countries, including the United States, had placed restrictions on the vessel because it was considered part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, a group of aging tankers used by Russia to circumvent Western sanctions.
The ship left Egypt in late January, according to VesselFinder, a maritime tracking service, and was attacked southeast of Malta, according to the Russian foreign ministry.
Italy’s Civil Protection Department said on Wednesday that the vessel had drifted south in recent days toward Libya.
Major storms this week in the Mediterranean prevented the Italian authorities “from monitoring the vessel more closely,” said Pierfrancesco Demilito, a spokesman for the department.
Mr. Demilito said that it did not appear that the tanker had lost any of the heavy fuel it used for its own propulsion.
Italy and Malta briefed senior European officials on Monday “about the escalating maritime and environmental threat in the Mediterranean” posed by the carrier, according to the European Union.
In a statement, the Italian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental campaign group, said that a potential spill of the liquid natural gas “could cause fires, cryogenic clouds that are lethal to marine life, and widespread, long-lasting pollution of the water and the atmosphere.”
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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