Oleg Naydenov News

Global maritime services firm, Ardent, and Ardentia Marine Group, a Spanish salvage, engineering and commercial diving company, have formally partnered for future operations following the signing of a cooperation agreement in June 2016. Ardentia has been the emergency response and underwater services provider for the Spanish Coast Guard since 2009, and has intervened in nearly 100 operations with marine casualty control, fuel and bunker removal, refloating and wreck removal. The company maintains a strong presence in Spain and Portugal.

Ardent, the recent merger of Titan and Svitzer Salvage and Ardentia Marine, a salvage and diving company based in Spain have, been awarded the contract to remove oil from the sunken fishing trawler Oleg Naydenov off the coast of Gran Canarias, Spain. On April 11, the vessel sustained a fire that quickly got out of control. All crew were able to abandon the vessel safely but due to the intensity of the fire, firefighting experts were unable to gain access to board the vessel and she sank approximately 15 nautical miles southwest of Gran Canarias. The vessel now sits upright on the seabed at a depth of 2,700 meters. The Ardent-Ardentia joint venture has already begun putting the necessary resources in place to execute the operational plan in a safe and efficient manner.

Around 120 kilos of shipping fuel has been scraped up off the Spanish Gran Canaria tourist beaches Veneguera, Tasarte and Taurito, the government said on Thursday, after a Russian fuel-laden ship sank off the coast last week. The situation on the beaches would worsen over the next few days, the environmentalist group Greenpeace warned in a separate statement. The Russian vessel Oleg Naydenov, carrying 1,409 tonnes of fuel oil, sank late on Tuesday 15 nautical miles south of Gran Canaria, and is currently leaking 5 - 10 litres of fuel into the sea per hour, according to the Spanish government. The Public Works Ministry has sent a robot submarine down to the wreckage, some 2.4 kilometres deep, to see if the three known leaks in the hull of the ship can be sealed, the government said.

Spain launched an investigation on Thursday into the sinking of a Russian ship off the Canary Islands, as coastguards battled a six-km (3.7-mile) oil slick close to tourist beaches. Environmentalist group Greenpeace criticised authorities for towing the burning fishing vessel out to sea after it caught fire in Las Palmas port early on Sunday. The Oleg Naydenov, carrying 1,409 tonnes of fuel oil, sank late on Tuesday 15 nautical miles south of Gran Canaria. Television images on Thursday showed oil floating on the water. Spain has sent three tugboats and two light aircraft to control the leak, Public Works Minister Ana Pastor told reporters. Experts were trying to locate a robot which could dive 2.4 kilometres deep to inspect the wreck.

The Russian trawler Oleg Naydenov was recently arrested and escorted in to the Port of Dakar by Senegal navy vessels. If found guilty it faces a doubling of the usual fine, and the arrest has also sparked an appeal by African coastal nations for an opinion from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. A French military plane flying over Senegal's Exclusive Economic Zone detected some of the same vessels that had been stripped of their licences continuing to fish in these waters.