Ecological Disaster in Spain!

[IceBlaZe]

Disaster looms as oil tanker sinks
Tuesday, November 19, 2002 Posted: 7:43 AM EST (1243 GMT)



Birds covered in oil have been found washed up on the shore



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VIDEO
A tanker splits in two off the coast of Spain and 70,000 tons of oil threaten environmental disaster (November 19)

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RELATED
• Interactive: Oil spill
• Oil slick: Captain is arrested





LA CORUNA, Spain -- One of the world's worst environmental disasters is feared to be under way as the crippled oil tanker Prestige begins to sink off Spain's north-west Atlantic coast.

The rear section of the Prestige has sunk off Spain's Atlantic coast, taking much of the oil in its tanks down with it, after earlier splitting in two, a spokesman for the Dutch salvage company Smit Salvage said.

Environmental group WWF has previously warned that if all the fuel oil leaked, it would be one of the largest oil leaks in the world -- about twice as big as the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska in 1989.

The Bahamian-flagged tanker, carrying 70,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, ran into trouble off the northwest coast of Spain during a violent storm last Wednesday when one of its tanks was punctured due to unknown causes and around 5,000 tonnes of oil flowed out.

"The aft part of the ship has sunk. The front part is still floating but it will sink... A lot of oil went down with this aft part," Lars Walder told Reuters by telephone from Rotterdam.

He added that winds and current would now help determine how much oil would reach the Spanish coastline.

CNN's Al Goodman said the worst fears of government, environmentalists and fishermen had come to pass with a "very desperate" outcome, giving the governments of Spain and neighbouring Portugal a "major problem."

Goodman said on Tuesday the economic damage had already been estimated at 90 million euros.

An oil slick 70 miles long and five miles wide was reported even before the ship split in two, Goodman said.

Oil has already washed up along the coast and birds and other wildlife have been contaminated, he added.

CNN's Juliet Bremner reported from the scene that barrages that had been laid to try to contain the spill were considered to be useless because of the volume of fuel involved.


The slick is threatening a stretch of the coast from Cape Finisterre to La Coruna



She described how an anguished local fisherman had crossed himself, pointed to the coastline and repeated: "A disaster, a disaster."

Dr Ian White, Managing Director of the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation said that heavy fuel oil was "one of the most difficult oils to deal with."

It was thick, heavy, persistent and sticky and would not be dispersed even by heavy seas, he said.

The tanker leaked fuel into the rich fishing grounds off Spain's northwest coast and the government warned that the oil spilled could seep into some of the many inlets that penetrate the Galicia coast like crooked fingers.

The ship is roughly on the border of areas for which Spain and Portugal have responsibility for maritime rescue operations, the ministry added.

Portugal and Spain had both barred salvagers from towing the ship to any of their ports to protect their fishing and tourism industries from further damage.

The shoreline is known as the "coast of death" because of many shipwrecks there.

Regional authorities have temporarily banned fishing in an area famous for its shellfish, octopus and crabs.

"We've had accidents before but nothing like this. If many fish die, will they ever come back?" Federico Martinez Vidal, a fisherman in the town of Camelle, told The Associated Press.

On Monday two Spanish tugboats had tried to pull the tanker as far away from the coast as possible. When it split it was listing about 130 kilometres (70 nautical miles) from the Galician coast.

The Spanish Government's decision to tow the Prestige further out to sea and set up barriers, coupled with a change in wind direction, had first raised hopes a disaster could be averted.

Spain says the vessel was bound for Gibraltar when the spill happened, a charge Britain denies.

Spain and the European Union have criticised Latvia, where the boat was loaded with much of its fuel, and Britain, which has jurisdiction over Gibraltar.

Both have accused Britain and Gibraltar of failing to comply with shipping safety regulations -- a charge they both deny.

The tanker's Greek captain was being held in custody after five hours of questioning by a judge in La Coruna on Sunday. (Full story)

Maritime authorities allege he failed to cooperate with rescue crews after issuing a distress call.

For hours as the Prestige drifted perilously close to shore, he refused to let tugboats secure cables to his stricken ship, officials said.

The tanker is owned by the Greek company Mare Shipping Incorporated.

Spain's north-west coast has suffered several tanker accidents in recent years, the worst in December 1992 when the Greek tanker Aegean Sea lost 21.5 million gallons of crude oil when it ran aground near La Coruna.

Dr White said the investigation into the ship's breaking up would be sure to look at whether it would have been avoided if the move to compulsory double-hulled tankers from single-hulled had gone ahead sooner.

This is sooo baaaaaaaaad
I'd hate to see the world the day after, why don't we humans start and take MORE precautions?

 

[Heffalump]

This is truly a shame. A REAL environmental disaster.

And I've seen prognostications of worse to come. Why? Not because hauling oil cannot be done safely. But because the average tanker on the seas today is decades old. Many of them are poorly maintained rust-buckets and the rate of sinkings in recent years has been on the increase.

International law makes regulating foreign flagged ships a tricky thing. But it would be nice if we could agree on more stringent safety standards for tankers visiting our shores.

 

[gr8ful wes]

It's not good, and there is no, I mean NO argument against it. Unlike global warming, this is a very black and white one here. This kind of crap is preventable.

 

[amadeus]

The captain of the ship has been arrested for negligence.

 

[nixon]

Dumb. They should have boarded the ship amid the chaos, systematically executing them for this act of slackness, and then report the 'sad news' stating that the rescue attempt failed and that all men had fallen overboard.

That's how such 'accidents' should be dealt with.

 

[napoleon526]

Here's a picture of the ship:

 

[napoleon526]

Originally posted by nixon
Dumb. They should have boarded the ship amid the chaos, systematically executing them for this act of slackness, and then report the 'sad news' stating that the rescue attempt failed and that all men had fallen overboard.

That's how such 'accidents' should be dealt with.

Unfortunately, this would not reverse the ecological damage, nor would it prevent other such accidents from occuring.

Here's the ship breaking up:

 

[amadeus]

Heard now that this could be twice as bad as the Exxon-Valdez spill back in '89.

 

[nixon]

What a swell job, Mr. Maguras!


EDIT: And James Coburn's dead, RIP.

 

[Ancient Grudge]

Originally posted by IceBlaZe

is is sooo baaaaaaaaad I'd hate to see the world the day after, why don't we humans start and take MORE precautions?

more precautions cost money and the sad truth most governments arent willing to spend money on the enviroment tony blair prefers to spend money building more roads.

 

[EdwardTking]

Originally posted by Ancient Grudge
more precautions cost money and the sad truth most governments arent willing to spend money on the enviroment

Companies register ships with states with the slackest standards.

Maybe international law should be changed to make individual
governments liable if they accept the registration of ships?!

 

[Heffalump]

International law isn't a statute that someome, say the UN General Assembly, can simply legislate.

To be bound by new restrictions nations would have to agree to a treaty setting them forth. Those nations that do not agree would not be bound.

And you'll likely have a tough time convincing nations like Liberia, that make a lot of money from "flagging", to impose more rigorous standards or accept liability. Their business/profits would dry up.

 

[jpowers]

OPEC countries produce 28 million barrels per day, almost all of which is exported via ship.
A large, double-hulled oil tanker can hold 100,000 barrels and journeys for an average one-way trip of 6 days at 20 mph.
Thus there are conservatively 3000 oil tankers on the seas on any given day.
Now let's define a measure of sturdiness for a ship that is defined as the chance that a ship would have a spill on a given day.
If we set the average sturdiness to 1 in 10000:
Each ship has a 4% chance of having a spill within a year.
Each day of the year carries a 26% chance of some ship having a spill.
The chance that there will be no spills within the year is 1 in 3.6E47. In other words, impossible.

If we set the average sturdiness to 1 in 1,000,000
Each ship has a .04% chance of having a spill within a year.
Each day of the year carries a .3% chance of some ship having a spill.
The chance that there will be no spills within the year is 1 in 3.

Sources used in this post:
http://www-old.isl.org/english/public/shortcommentno1-2e.html
http://users2.ev1.net/~egrayfox/cyber2/RETRO07.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/security/esar/latwom.html

 

[Sparrowhawk]

As if we didn't have enough reasons to minimize our use of oil, here's another. With the amount of instability in the middle east, all the pollution that oil-based combustion causes, and the environmental consequences of drilling and shipping it, you'd think that certain nations would be more interested in alternatives.

 

[ApocalypseKurtz]

I think that no matter what we do, as long as we continue to ship oil in tankers then there will inevitably be spills every now and then. Sad, but true.

 

[Perfection]

I wonder how they will clean up the oil in the sunken part of the vessel (If they do)

 

[HotDog Fish]

This is very bad, hopefully they will be able to ocntain theremaningi oil drums intact so they won't release more oil. But it's a very distrurbing sight to see all that black goo covering what was once magestic ocean teaming with life. Sparrowhawk is right, this once again shows that we should not continue to sustain ourselves on oil as a fuel source, especially these rust buckets. The problem is even if there is something passed by the UN to ennact more regulation on shipping there would need to be more paper work is expensive and slow, also this would bmean countries would need more naval prescensein their waters, and even search through International waters as a sohw of force. In Canada we have tons of bilge oil from Cargo ships every week or to dumped into our waters, we catch some but we cannot let this continue, even when caught the fine is not usually that big. Countries need to realize that oceans surrounding them (ok well...most countries) are not only trade roots but ever square cm of it is an ecosystem and should be protected

ps. does anybody know how much oil was brought down on warships and tankers in WWI and II?