Disabled oil tanker adrift in Baltic Sea towed to Sassnitz

A loaded oil tanker that lost the ability to manoeuvre in the Baltic Sea near the German island of Rügen has been towed to the city harbour of Sassnitz.

The stricken tanker Eventin, loaded with 99,000 tons of oil, was being held in place about five kilometres off the coast by two tugboats on Sunday.

The vessel will remain there until a decision is made on next steps, a spokesperson for Germany’s Central Command for Maritime Emergencies (CCME) said. The ship is watertight and poses no danger to the environment, the CCME added.

The Eventin, which was built in 2006 and is sailing under a Panamanian flag, was en route from the Russian port of Ust-Luga to Egypt’s Port Said, according to the ship tracking platform Vesselfinder.

The ship is part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” used to export oil despite heavy sanctions on the country, according to a list of Russian-linked vessels compiled by the environmental advocacy organization Greenpeace.

The European Union and Britain, among others, have imposed sanctions on Russia’s oil industry in response to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Ships in the “shadow fleet” are often outdated and in poor operating condition.

The Eventin suffered an engine failure on Friday and was drifting in the Baltic Sea before being secured, according to CCME. The cause of the engine failure remained initially unclear.