The state of emergency will be applied starting Friday as the 80-kilometre (50-mile) slick on the Songhua River, caused after an explosion at a PetroChina benzene factory in China's Jilin province earlier this month, nears the Russian border.

The Songhua feeds into the Heilong River, known as the Amur in Russian, which runs along the border between the two countries and is the main source of drinking water for more than 1.5 million inhabitants in Khabarovsk province.

Russian officials have started to test the waters of the Amur and expect the slick to arrive in Russia between Friday and Monday, reaching the province's main city of Khabarovsk in early December.

China's State Environmental Protection Administraion said Thursday the slick would only reach Russia in two weeks' time because of the slow speed of the river's current.

Russia's emergency situations ministry said the city of Khabarovsk's drinking water system would be blocked for around three days because of the slick.

The city will be supplied by some 60 drinking water tanks, aimed primarily at providing hospitals, orphanages and bread factories with drinking water, said an official from the ministry's regional headquarters.

Warned about a potential disruption in water supplies, inhabitants of Khabarovsk have been hoarding drinking water, forcing local authorities to order extra deliveries to avoid panic buying, the official said.

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