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Prestige Oil Disaster
By Mike McDougall, Fri Dec 9th
On November 13th 2002, the Liberian owned tanker, The Prestige,ran into trouble in heavy weather off the coast of Galicia. The240 metre single-hulled ship had burst one its tanks and wasstarting to leak oil. The ships Greek captain called the Spanishauthorities for aid but instead of the expected tow-in he wastold to steer away from the coast and head North West. Similarresponses were sent out from Spanish and Portuguese coastalauthorities who were keen to see the foundering tanker kept awayfrom their shores. This ship got into serious trouble on thesixth day of drifting when a 40 ft section of the hull cameaway; she split in two that afternoon spilling a huge amount ofher 85,000 m³ cargo of oil into the Atlantic 250km from thecoast of Galicia. The Prestige sank entirely later that day inover 3000 metres of water starting Spain's worst environmentaldisaster. The decision to take the ship away from the coast was not a goodone; by this time 5000 tons of fuel was already spilt and thestrong westerly winds that are prevalent in the region at thistime of year were already pushing a huge slick of oil towardsthe Galician coastline. Galicia is one of Spain's most remoteregions and the population is very much coast dwelling with ahuge portion of the areas income coming from the sea - renownedas an extremely rich ground, the area is also home tocoral, sharks and thousands of seas birds. The oil hit Galiciain droves; thousands of acres of beach were covered in oil withthousands of dead puffins and razorbills (amongst other birdsand fish) washed up on the regions shores. With the wreck stillleaking 125 tons of its cargo everyday, the clean up operationwould have to get under way swiftly. 6000 seaman and anestimated 2500 boats were stuck in port in the region whichincludes Vigo, Europe's largest port. The huge fishingindustry was crippled overnight - and it wasn't just thefishermen who were affected, distributors and vendors saw theirlivelihood shattered too. The clean up operation was huge with a lot of volunteers lendingtheir weight to the effort. Thousands of tons of oil wereremoved from beaches and aid was provided for hundreds of birdscovered in the Prestige's noxious cargo. Estimates
reckon thatthe disaster could cost somewhere in the region of €5billion inthe ten years following the spill. It was six months until thefishing fleets dropped their nets again and locals stillmaintain that old spots they frequented before thedisaster are now completely barren.
In the wake of the accident, huge international pressure hasraised many questions about the safety level of oil tankers. 80%of the Prestige's 77,000 ton cargo was lost from the ship andconcerns about its safety were raised before the voyage. In thewake of the incident many have called for the ban ofsingle-hulled tankers, the IMO (International MaritimeOrganisation) called for their phasing out to be brought forwardand the European Commission did exactly that by moving the dateforward from 2015 to 2005. Pressure has also come from withinSpain about the governments handling of the crisis; it tookalmost a year for the Spanish authorities to finally tell thepublic exactly how much oil was spilt. Galician Environmentalmovement "Nunca Mais" (Galician for "Never Again") felt thegovernment tried to cover up the scale of the damage and exactlya year after the tragedy, they led a march in Santiago deCompostela under the banner "We continue to demand solutions andjustice". The effects of the disaster not only affected the Galician coast- oil was washed up in Portugal, on the beaches of Normandy andeven England's south cast did not escape unscathed. Such is thequantity of oil contained in tankers that that a spill can havecatastrophic affects - with thousands of single hulled tankersstill in operation there are fears that we're endangering ourenvironment unnecessarily. About the author:Mike McDougall has five years experience working as atravel writer and marketeer. He is currenlty working to provideadditional content for Babylon-idiomas, a Spanish language school with anexcellent presence in Spain and Latin America. This work is covered by a creative commons licence
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