ENVIRONMENT-SPAIN: Sunken Prestige Tanker Leaks More Oil

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Dec 6 2002 (IPS) - The ecological and social catastrophe caused by the fuel oil spill and sinking of the tanker Prestige took another turn for the worse Friday when it was found that the remaining fuel in the hull had begun to leak from the wreckage some 270 km off Spain’s northwest coast.

The 26-year-old Prestige began to break up in mid-November near the coast of Spain’s autonomous community of Galicia and was towed out to sea, finally sinking Nov 19 off Cape Finisterre, which marks the extreme western point of the Iberian Peninsula.

Fishing is the source of livelihood for an estimated quarter million families in Galicia. Madrid has already banned fishing and shellfish gathering along most of the Galician coast.

Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s deputy premier and coordinator of the government’s crisis team to handle the oil spill, said Friday that two big fuel oil slicks had been located and were believed to have originated from the sunken two-piece wreckage.

He reported that the government sent a special clean-up ship to contain them.

Earlier this week, the Spanish government had denied reports that the fuel oil had continued to escape from the ship’s hull.

Rajoy’s report confirmed the worst of the hypotheses proffered during the last week. It was known that some 20,000 tonnes of fuel oil had been spilled in the first days of the disaster and that what remained of the 77,000-tonne load had sunk with the Prestige, contained in the vessel’s single-hull structure.

Some technical reports suggested that due to the depth of the tanker’s resting place, 3,600 m below the surface, the fuel oil would crystallise within the hull’s containers and would not leak.

But other experts warned that just the opposite would occur. Hope had remained among the Galician population, environmentalists and officials that the former would prove correct.

The two new slicks spotted Friday and the images recorded by the French deep-sea submarine Nautile, which has been monitoring the wreckage, confirm the second circumstance.

The Nautile’s footage of the oil – thickened to toothpaste consistency by the freezing temperatures – oozing from the sunken vessel were broadcast on Spanish television Thursday, which experts say forced the government to recognise the severity of the problem.

In addition to contaminating of the Galician coastline, Europe’s richest in fish and shellfish, the oil has spread to Spain’s northern coasts of the autonomous communities of Asturias, Cantabria and Basque Country, and to the French coast.

To the south, Portugal had been preparing several days for the arrival of oil slicks.

Since the crisis began, the oil-collecting ships have recovered 10,770 tonnes of fuel oil out at sea, and members of the Galician fishing community another 1,600. Along the coast, 500 tonnes of the black goo have been collected, according to official reports.

Among those working the beaches are the corps of volunteers, with more than 3,000 in La Coruña and some 500 in Pontevedra, the two coastal Galician provinces affected by the spill.

The volunteers have been dubbed "the white tide", for the protective uniforms they wear and for their work in defence of the environment.

Spain’s opposition parties and civil society groups continue their harsh criticism of the government of José María Aznar, charging that it failed to take immediate and appropriate action, which contributed to aggravating the problem.

An estimated 15,000 people gathered Friday in the Galician capital, Santiago de Compostela, convened by a group of Galician artists and intellectuals for a protest against the government, which they say has "scorned" the population in not providing clear accounts of occurrences surrounding and impacts of the spill.

In Brussels, meanwhile, the European Union’s ministers of transport resolved Friday – in a unanimous vote – to prohibit entry into the ports of the bloc’s 15 countries of single-hulled tankers carrying heavy fuel oil or heavy crude.

The Prestige was transporting heavy fuel oil, which is the dregs of the oil refining process.

The transport ministers also called on the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, to negotiate with the 10 countries applying for EU membership and neighbouring nations, including Russia, to join in the ban on allowing single-hulled vessels to dock in their ports.

The officials also backed the measures proposed earlier this week by Spanish and French authorities to prevent "garbage-ships", vessels transporting toxic or dangerous substances, from navigating within the 200-mile limit of their territorial waters.

ENVIRONMENT-SPAIN: Sunken Prestige Tanker Leaks More Oil

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Dec 6 2002 (IPS) - The ecological and social catastrophe caused by the fuel oil spill and sinking of the tanker Prestige took another turn for the worse Friday when it was found that the remaining fuel in the hull had begun to leak from the wreckage some 270 km off Spain’s northwest coast.
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