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A 50-ton oil spill was spotted near the oil pipeline in Khabrovsky region on Tuesday, with experts blaming unauthorized tapping as its cause.

The tapping and the spill was spotted on the pipeline stretching from Sakhalin’s Okha to the town of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Khabarovsky region, by the company’s pipe managing brigade 60 kilometers from the settlement of Tsimmermanovka, news reports said.

The illegal siphon has been removed and the oil spill localized, but eliminating the spill consequences as well as cleaning the polluted territory will take two days, a press statement from oil-producer Sakhalinmorneftegaz, a Sakhalin-based Rosneft subsidiary, said.

Khabarovsk region’s Komsomolsky Prosecutor’s Office has launched a criminal case into the incident.

This has been the third incident of the kind on the pipeline this year, with previous cases of unauthorized tapping discovered in June and May. The cases have not been solved yet.