Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.11
By Umid Niayesh, Fatih Karimov - Trend: Iran wants Caspian Sea states to collaborate for preventing from ecological pollution in the sea.
Abbas Razmi, Director of the Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) Department of the National Iranian Oil Company, said oil companies which are operating at the Caspian Sea oilfields should boost cooperation to prevent from ecological pollution, Iran 's Shana news agency reported on November 11.
The Caspian Sea, surrounded by Kazakhstan , Azerbaijan , Turkmenistan , Russia and Iran , has long suffered pollution from oil extraction and other industries.
Russians are the greatest polluters. They create 80 percent of the Caspian pollution.
According to the report of the Energy Information Administration untreated waste from the Volga River , into which half the population of Russia - and most of its heavy industry - drains its sewage, empties directly into the Caspian Sea .
Azerbaijan's Ecology and Natural Resources Minister, Huseyngulu Baghirov told last November that despite the growth in oil production volumes, the Caspian Sea 's pollution level has decreased considerably.
According to the minister, the traditional technology used in the Soviet period is not now implemented in the cleaning of the Caspian Sea 's waters.
The minister said that the only source of the Caspian Sea 's pollution is leakages from the wells along the sea's bottom that are left from the Soviet period.
In July 2013, the then deputy head of Iran 's Environmental Protection Organization, Abdolrza Karbasi said that The Caspian Sea is mainly polluted with oil, industrial and household waste, as well as sewage.
" Iran 's share in pollution of the sea is equal to 12 percent," he added.
"The sea from the Iranian part is mainly polluted with industrial and household waste, Karbasi said." Around 400 million cubic meters of these waste per year is produced in Caspian provinces of Iran , only 40 percent of which is filtrated and the remaining part is released to the sea without any filtration," He added.
The littoral states have held five meetings on the Protection of Marine Environment, the latest one in May 2014.