The Russian tanker Arctic Metagaz has been wandering like a wreck in the central Mediterranean for more than two weeks, between Malta, Lampedusa and the Gulf of Sidra, in Libya. A slow and out of control drift that makes the hypothesis that there will be a serious environmental disaster increasingly likely.
On the night between 3 and 4 March, there was a large fire on the ship. The crew, made up of thirty people of Russian nationality, was evacuated and transferred to Benghazi, Libya. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of hitting the ship with a drone, although no official confirmation has come from Kiev.
Since then, the hull of the Arctic Metagaz has continued to drift along, severely damaged, tilted and without steering, with an extremely dangerous load on board: approximately 61 thousand tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and 700 tons of diesel. The structural conditions of the ship – 277 meters long and 43 meters wide – remain uncertain, while the risk of approach, even for possible rescue units, is extremely high due to the possibility of sudden explosions.
The Arctic Metagaz is part of Russia’s so-called “ghost fleet”, a parallel commercial shipping system built by Moscow to circumvent sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Canada and Switzerland on hydrocarbon exports. These are ships that frequently change name, flag and ownership, moving along routes that are not always transparent between Russian terminals and ports in North Africa or Asia.
According to the maritime database Equasis, in the last three years Arctic Metagaz has changed its name four times, its flag six times and its owner nine times: a figure that reflects the measure of the opacity of this system. It currently sails under the Russian flag, but its administrative identity is the result of a stratification of steps that make it difficult to establish precise responsibilities in the event of an accident.
The owner appears to be the Lathyrus Shipping Company, a company formally registered in Monrovia, Liberia, behind which lies an ownership structure that reaches as far as Mumbai, India. Both the ship and the associated company are subject to various international sanctions.
The Metagaz had set sail in February from Murmansk, on the Barents Sea, and was headed towards Port Said, in Egypt, a strategic hub for access to the Suez Canal. According to ship tracking platform MarineTraffic, the last recorded position before the fire placed the vessel approximately 30 nautical miles off the Maltese coast. However, as reported by the Times of Malta newspaper, in the last 300 kilometers of navigation the tanker deactivated the transponder, following a so-called “grey route” to evade controls.
The affair risks turning into a diplomatic puzzle. A coalition of nine European countries, led by Italy and France, sent a letter to the European Commission underlining that “the precarious condition of the vessel, combined with the nature of its specialized cargo, constitutes a direct and serious threat of a major environmental disaster in the heart of the European Union’s maritime space”. The letter calls for stronger action against sanctioned Russian ships.
For her part, the spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, recalled that, according to international law, the responsibility for the intervention falls on the closest coastal states.
The result is an operational stalemate in which no one seems willing to take on the burden – and the risk – of safety operations, also due to the costs and unstable conditions of the wreck. This paralysis increases the danger of an ecological catastrophe: LNG, even if it evaporates quickly if released, can generate large-scale fires, while diesel fuel is a direct threat to the marine ecosystem. An uncontrolled spill could compromise already fragile habitats, affect wildlife and reach the coasts.
What makes the picture even more disturbing is the growing frequency of similar episodes in the Mediterranean. According to what was reported by the Reuters agency, three oil tankers were damaged by explosions last February in separate incidents, the causes of which remain unknown; one of these episodes occurred in the port of Savona.
Furthermore, in December 2025, the Russian tanker Qendil was hit by Ukrainian drones off the coast of Crete: in that case the tanker was empty and no significant spills were recorded. The attack was claimed by Kiev as a legitimate military action.
Today the Arctic Metagaz case dramatically shows how the Mediterranean, one of the main global energy arteries, has transformed into a theater of hybrid warfare on the high seas, with potentially devastating environmental consequences.
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