Stricken tanker splits and sinks

A TIME bomb of almost 20 million gallons of thick oil was ticking on the bed of the Atlantic last night, threatening to swamp Spanish and Portuguese coasts with one of the world's worst ecological disasters.

The oil went down 11,800 feet inside the bowels of the crippled tanker Prestige which finally split in half yesterday and sank 150 miles off Spain's north-west Coast of Death.

A 22-mile long slick of oil with the consistency of chewing gum seeped out of the tanker before it sank and European environmental agencies prepared for a major battle to stop it hitting Spanish and Portuguese shores to add more misery to an already polluted coastline.

"We can say goodbye to the ship and its cargo," said Lars Walder, a spokesman for the Dutch salvage company SMIT, adding that if the tanks fell to the sea floor unbroken, it might moderate the environmental damage.

Nevertheless, sooner or later, the oil would seep out, he said.

"A lot depends on the temperature of the sea. If it drops low enough, the oil could become a solid mass and is not so dangerous," said Claudia Van Andel, a SMIT spokeswoman.

The lost oil weighing more than 70,000 tonnes is nearly twice the amount of the 1989 Exxon Valdez crude oil spill which devastated Alaska.

"We hope that the sunken part does not spill its fuel. But still it's a time bomb at the bottom of the sea," said Maria Jose Caballero who heads the coastal protection project for Greenpeace.

"The vessel cracked in the hull because it was very old. There's nothing makes us believe it won't finally burst and leak all its oil. It's insoluble, viscous and sticky, which makes it difficult for the clean-up operations."

The Bahamas registered Prestige sprang a leak during a storm last Wednesday and was towed by tugboats 152 miles off Spain's Atlantic coast.

That relatively small slick of about 3,000 tonnes tarred beaches up and down about 125 miles of Spain's Galician coast. Authorities made the area off limits to fishing, leaving hundreds out of work.

Soldiers and volunteers were still cleaning up the beaches between Cape Finisterre north to the city of A Coruna yesterday. Dozens of beaches and coves along the coast were coated in thick oil while up to 150 animals, mostly seabirds, were taken into care for treatment.

"We've seen many dead fish and birds and many others in agony when we rescue them," Ezequiel Navio, from the World Wildlife Fund.

The salvage company estimated that the tanker may have spilled up to 13% of its cargo so far.

Walder said there were dozens of tankers lying on the ocean floor around the world and that it was possible to suction off the oil, but this was rarely done because of the costs.

A spokesman for ship manager Universe Maritime complained that the ship's location far off shore had exposed it to storms. The Spanish government had ordered the ship far from land to limit contamination and Lisbon too refused to allow it to enter any Portuguese ports.

The 44,000 tonne Prestige had sustained a near 50ft crack in the hull below the waterline that made it unable to proceed under its own power while salvagers sought a port to do repairs or transfer the oil to another vessel.

Portuguese authorities said winds and tides were expected to keep the oil slick left by the sunken vessel, estimated to be 22 miles long and 500 1,650 feet wide, from reaching its coast at least until Thursday.

The tanker's Greek captain, Apostolus Maguras, is being held in a Spanish jail on charges of disobeying authorities and harming the environment.

The ship, owned by the Liberian-registered company Mare Shipping Incorporated, was bound for Singapore when the storm hit.

Spanish authorities claimed the Prestige had not been inspected since 1999, despite regular stops in the British colony of Gibraltar a charge that Britain denies.

Spain and the EU last week said action could be taken against Britain or Latvia, where the oil was loaded, over the boat. The ship's management company said this was the first time such problems had occurred with the vessel and that it was last inspected in May.

Spain's north-west coast has suffered several tanker accidents in recent years leading to it being called the Coast of Death. The worst was in 1992, when the Greek tanker Aegean Sea lost 21.5 million gallons of crude oil when it ran aground near A Coruna.

The accident was the second tanker disaster off Europe's Atlantic coasts in three years.

In response the European Commission yesterday demanded governments move faster to enforce new inspection rules that could prevent such catastrophes. Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio sent a letter to the 15 EU capitals urging that the measures be written into national law and implemented as quickly as possible, he said.

The measures were adopted after the 1999 Erika oil spill polluted 250 miles of French coastline.

Under the new rules, port authorities are required to check at least 25% of all ships coming into dock, starting with older, single-hull vessels.

Ships flying "flags of convenience" or registered in countries with lax safety, labour or tax rules are to be given priority.

The Prestige's operator, Universe Maritime denied that the vessel was avoiding EU ports. A spokesman at the company's offices in Athens said the Prestige had been sailing mainly between the Gulf and the Far East for the past three years.

"It's not a case that an owner is trying to avoid anything, but if it's picking up fuel, oil in Russia in this case, then it's not going to call at a port in Europe on the way through," the spokesman said.