Oil Spill Fears Mount as Russia Tankers Reject Key Danish Pilots

Tankers hauling Russian crude through Denmark’s perilous shipping straits are increasingly rejecting the services of pilots when they do so, raising the the chances of an oil spill off the country’s coast.

In the three months through July, 20% of all so-called shadow-fleet tankers moving Russian oil through the Danish straits declined the help of the experts who know the local waters, according to a data compiled by Bloomberg and Danwatch, a Copenhagen-based investigative journalism nonprofit. That proportion has increased from 4% a year earlier.