In what appears to be the first major oil spill by Russia’s shadow fleet, a major storm has ripped a Russian oil tanker apart, tearing off its nose on December 15. A total of two ships have reportedly sunk as a result of the storm and at least four crew members are thought to have lost their lives, TASS reports.

The pair of tankers, Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239, were carrying over 4,000 tonnes of fuel oil. Each has a crew of 13-15 people on board the ship, according to reports.

One of the vessels, owned by Kamatrans company, is assigned to the port of St Petersburg.

Separately, the Russian Federal Agency for Sea and Inland Water Transport reported the two ships had collided in the storm.

"Today two tankers, Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239, were damaged due to a storm in the waters of the Black Sea. There are 15 people on board of one ship and 14 people on the other. The collision caused an oil spill emergency," the agency said, reported TASS.  Two rescue tugboats and two helicopters have been dispatched, the agency said.

At the time of writing, the ships are sinking or have sunk off the Kerch Strait in the Black Sea. Reportedly, ten sailors from the noseless sinking ship have been rescued but several crew members are in the water after the nose of one of the ships broke off from the main hull. The fate of four crew members below decks at the time of the disaster is unknown.

"The tanker's bow was torn off in a storm; the crew of 13 people is now in the aft part," Russia’s Emergency Ministry (MChS) reported. A search and rescue operation has already been launched in the Russian-controlled strait that leads to the Black Sea. Waves ripped the ships apart during the storm, and mechanics had little chance of survival, experts say.

"The second ship is already going down, holy sh*t," sailors nearby said on footage of the sinking ships posted on social media.

It is not clear if the two ships are part of Russia’s shadow fleet that has been transporting oil around the world. The sinking of the two ships testifies to observers’ concerns that many of the ships in this fleet are old and pose a potential environmental risk, as their seaworthiness is in question.

Both ships were reportedly carrying low grade fuel and oil on the water is visible surrounding one of the ships in video posted online.

If the two vessels are confirmed to be part of Russia’s shadow fleet, the disaster would be the first major oil spill involving a member of that fleet.

As bne IntelliNews reported, the industry body that monitors tanker safety, ITOPF, has compiled statistics on oil spills of all sizes going back to the 1970s. The number of oil spills from tankers larger than seven tonnes has not exceeded single digits per annum for the last fifteen years, according to ITOPF.

Since 2000, there have been only three major oil spills and 55 minor spills (classified as those over 5,000 barrels). “Ironically, the tankers involved in the last two major accidents – Hebei Spirit and Sanchi – were fourteen and ten years old: relatively young by the metrics for the tanker fleet,” said Sergey Vakulenko, an independent energy analyst and consultant to a number of Russian and international global oil and gas companies, in a paper for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace dedicated to the danger of oil spills and the age of the vessels in Russia’s shadow fleet.

“The safety record shows that despite the presence of many older vessels in the global tanker fleet, the number and volume of oil spills in the last decade and a half has been extremely low, so the age of the tankers – at least within the observable window of under thirty years old – has little influence on the probability and gravity of the accidents,” Vakulenko adds.