Prestige oil spill failed to teach us a lesson

THE more that is revealed about the Prestige and its devastating oil spill off the Spanish coast, the more shameful it all becomes.

Not only was the impending disaster handled wrong from the start apparently, but mistakes continue to be made in relation to other dangerous vessels.

And the mistakes of the past, such as the Ericka that ran aground on December 12, 1999, off Brittany, have not led to lessons being learned.

Yesterday the European Commission published a list of 66 vessels that Commissioner Loyola de Palacio described as time bombs.

These of course are just the vessels that came to the attention of port authorities in EU countries over the past two years. The Prestige is not on the list suggesting it is incomplete.

They are all sailing under flags of convenience granted mostly by Turkey, the islands St Vincent and Grenadines and Cambodia. The rest are from Central and South America, northern Africa and two from Romania with its coastline on the Black Sea.

Most of them are bulk carriers but there are no less than eight chemical tankers included and one 37 year old passenger ship. The oldest vessel is a bulk carrier 42 years old and almost all the ships on the list are regarded as very high risk.

All of these vessels would have been refused access to EU ports if the relevant Directive prepared by the European Commission in 2001 had been implemented.

And single-hull vessels like the Prestige carrying heavy fuel oil would not have been allowed anywhere near EU ports from 2002 if industry pressure had not resulted in the date being put off to 2015.

Under the measures agreed by the EU the Prestige was due to be out of business in March 2005, but this good intention is of little use to the Gallicia fishermen whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the oil pollution.

There can be little doubt that everything associated with the Prestige and the subsequent crisis it has caused has been mishandled. The hopeless legislation that exists meant responsibility and liability were disputed and so delayed taking action on the dangerous vessel.

The Spanish government towed the vessel out to sea, ignoring the advice of experts who advised it be taken to an enclosed area where the oil spill could be contained.

The Spaniards tried to hand responsibility over to the Portuguese at first because they said it was not clear in whose waters the accident happened.

Then there are the host of questions about the methods and products used to clean up the oil spill with many experts believing that these made the situation worse.

But just to illustrate how poor the measures that are in place, the Gibraltar authorities attempted to detain a cargo ship they believed was in a dangerous condition.

The captain was ordered to surrender the ship’s papers but once night fell she slipped out of Gibraltar with her lights switched off and leaving her papers behind.

Police gave chase but she refused to stop and is now expected in the port of Piraeus in Greece.

Incidents like this give some idea of the awful state of international maritime law when it comes to protecting assets other than those of the vessel owners’.

Irish MEP John Cushnahan has long been campaigning for an EU coast guard that could respond to disasters like the Prestige. After all the effects are usually of such proportions that no single country has the ability to cope with it.

As he rightly says accidents such as this should be seen as happening in EU waters with consequences for our shared environment and fishing industries.

With an EU Coastguard the response time could be dramatically reduced, a refuge port selected and the damage minimised.