Disaster looms as tanker splits in two

The crippled tanker Prestige, carrying more than 70,000 tons of oil, split in two today threatening Spain’s north-west coast with an environmental disaster.

A spill of the entire cargo would double that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, one of the worst ever.

Spanish government official Arsenio Fernandez de Mesa said the tanker was expected to leak an “important” portion of its oil.

“The ship split in two at eight this morning (7am Irish time),” said a spokeswoman for the regional government in Galicia.

Lars Walder, spokesman of the SMIT Salvage company, said it was not immediately clear how much oil had spilled when the 44,000 ton vessel broke up about 150 miles off the Coast of Death – so named because of the frequency of shipwrecks.

The Bahamian flagged Prestige ran into trouble off the Galician coast during a storm last Wednesday.

Attempts by salvagers to tow it to safety failed after both Spain and Portugal refused to allow the ship to dock.

The salvagers had fought to prevent the tanker from splitting by turning it so that its ruptured hull no longer faced the waves.

The tanker had already leaked fuel into the rich fishing grounds off Spain where the government immediately banned fishing.

The Spanish government had warned that the oil spilled so far could seep into some of the many inlets that penetrate the Galicia coast like crooked fingers.

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

The vessel had a 30 to 50 foot crack in the hull below the waterline which made it unable to proceed under its own power while salvagers sought a port to do repairs or transfer the oil to another vessel.