Prestige oil spill
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The Prestige was an oil tanker whose sinking in 2002 off the Spanish coast caused a huge oil spill. Thousands of kilometers of coastline and more than thousand beaches on the Spanish and French coast were polluted, and the local fishing industry has been devastated. It has become the largest environmental disaster in Spain's history.
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The event
The Prestige was a Greek-operated, single-hulled tanker flying a Bahamas flag, had a Liberian owner, and had been chartered by a Swiss-based Russian oil company.
The Prestige was formerly named Mt Gladys, Length over all 243 m, Length BPP 232 m, Breadth 34,4 m, Depth moulded 18,7 m. Cargo oil cap approx 85.000 m³, fuel oil 4500 m³. The cargo oil was contained in 12 tanks, with between 3.200 and 12.000 m³ capacity.
On November 13,2002, one of the ship's tanks burst during a storm off Galicia in northwestern Spain. Fearing that the ship would sink, the captain called for help from Spanish rescue workers, with the expectiation that the vessel would be brought into harbour. However the captain was ordered to steer the embattled ship away from the coast. Soon they reported that a huge 40-foot section of the starboard hull had broken off, allowing huge amounts of oil to flood out with impunity.
On 8.00 AM on November 19, the ship split in two, and sank completely that same afternoon. The oil tanker was reported to be about 250 km from the Spanish coast at that time. An earlier oil slick had already reached the coast. The Greek captain of the Prestige, Apostolos Mangouras, was taken into custody, accused of not co-operating with salvage crews and of harming the environment.
5,000 tons of fuel oil were spilled in the incident.
The Spanish government decided to let the Prestige sink. It claimed the leakage would not have a lasting effect on the environment. After the sinking, however, the wreck continued leaking oil, some 125 tons of oil a day, which has polluted the sea bed and contaminated the coastline, especially along the territory of Galicia. The affected area is not only a very important ecological region, supporting coral reefs and many species of sharks and birds, but it also supports the crucial fishing industry. The heavy coastal pollution forced the region's government to suspend offshore fishing for six months.
On December 10, the prime minister of Spain, José María Aznar, acknowledged that his government had made bad decisions. The ship would not have broken up and sunk if it had been towed to calm waters and the cargo could have been transferred, as the vessel's captain and the salvage company had requested.
Aftermath
In the subsequent months, thousands of volunteers from Spain and other parts of Europe flocked to Galicia to help clean the coastline. The French prime minister promised € 50 million for cleanup.
Initially, the government claimed just 17,000 tons of oil had been lost, and that the remaining 60,000 tons would freeze and not leak from the sunken tanker. In early in 2003, it announced that half of the oil had been lost. Now that figure has risen to about 63,000 tons. But in August, 2003, Spanish government disclosed that the oil spill was far worse than previously claimed. In 2004 the remaining 13.000 m³ of cargo oil has been removed from the wreck, by means of aluminium shuttles and remote operated vehicles.
Environmentalists are now comparing the damage caused to that of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989. More than eighty per cent of the tanker's 77,000 tons of fuel oil is now thought to have been spilled off Spain's north-east coast.
Experts predict marine life will suffer pollution from the Prestige for at least ten years due to the type of oil spilt, which contain light fractions called polyaromatic-hydrocarbons. These toxic chemicals poison plankton, fish eggs and crustaceans, leading to carcinogenic effects in fish and other animals higher in the food chain.
The environmental damage caused by the Prestige was most severe in the coast of Galicia, where local activists founded the environmental movement Nunca Mais (Galician for Never Again), dedicated to tightening environmental laws.
The past months, engineers have been using robots to seal cracks in the tanker's hull, now 4000 metres below the sea surface. The oil leakage is now reported to have slowed to a trickle of 20 liters a day. By October 2004, engineers hope to have removed the oil still in the tanker by drilling of small holes in the wreck, and pumping it out into bags, 250 tons at a time. These will be floated to the surface. The total estimated cost of the operation will be € 100 million.
A recent report by the Galicia-based Barrie de la Maza economic institute criticised the Spanish government's handling of the catastrophe. It estimated the cost of the clean-up to the Galician coast alone at € 2.5 billion. The clean-up of the Exxon Valdez cost US$2 billion.
The government was also slated for its decision to tow the ailing wreck out to sea — where it split in two — rather than into a port. But Walmsley believes most of the blame lies with the ship's inspectors who allowed the Prestige to sail. "It was reported as being substandard at one of the ports it visited before Spain. The whole inspection regime needs to be revamped and double-hulled tankers used instead," he says.
Since the disaster, oil tankers similar to the Prestige have been directed away from the French and Spanish coastlines. The European Commissioner for Transport, Spaniard Loyola de Palacio, has pushed for the ban of single-hulled tankers.
The Spanish government has promised an investment plan for Galicia across several years. In the following local elections, the People's Party got good results at the affected Costa da Morte.
Investigation
The massive environmental and financial costs of the spill has resulted in an ongoing inquiry into how a structurally deficient ship was able to travel out to sea, much less approach Spain.
Investigators have since learned that prior to the spill the Prestige had set sail from St. Petersburg, Russia, without being properly inspected. It travelled to the Atlantic via the shallow and vulnerable Baltic Sea. A previous captain who complained about numerous structural deficiencies within the ship was rebuffed, and later resigned in protest.
The ownership of the Prestige is unclear, making it difficult to determine exactly who is responsible for the oil spill. Evidence is now pointing to a secretive Greek family who allegedly registered the ship to a front company in Liberia. Thus the Prestige sinking has exposed the difficulties in regulation posed by flags of convenience.
Quote
- The environmental devastation caused is at least on a par, if not worse, than the Exxon Valdez. The amount of oil spilled is more than the Valdez and the toxicity is higher, because of the higher temperatures." — Simon Walmsley, World Wildlife Fund's senior policy officer for shipping
Reference
- Prestige oil spill far worse than thought (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994100), article from New Scientist, August 27, 2003
External link
- Plataforma Nunca Mais (http://www.plataformanuncamais.org/), Prestige activists (in Galician)
- Coordination Technical Bureau of Scientific Intervention Program against Accidental Marine Spills (http://otvm.uvigo.es/), This bureau is responsible for management and coordination works of research projects.de:Prestige (Schiff)