Oil slick heading to Portugal

Portugal began deploying floating barriers across a river mouth today, fearing patches from a major oil spill affecting Spain could drift south.

Defence Minister Paulo Portas said the fragments from a major slick were spotted drifting south last night.

“Because it’s better to be safe than sorry, we have enacted precautionary measures,” Portas said in Lisbon.

He said the patches of oil were stretched along 43 miles, contained about 630 tons of oil, and the nearest was about 19 miles off the Portuguese coast.

Four 660 feet floating barriers were placed at the mouth of the River Minho which forms the northern border with Spain.

Meanwhile in Spain, fishermen fought to contain contamination of Europe’s richest shellfish beds and a national park, home to colonies of protected birds and special vegetation.

High winds from the north were spreading the oil slick from the sunken Prestige tanker to the southern stretch of Galicia’s coastline in Spain’s north-western corner.

Regional authorities confirmed some slicks had entered the estuaries of Vigo and Pontevedra, edging closer to the Cies Islands which were declared a Natural Reserve in 1980 and boast important marine breeding birds such as gulls, shags and guillemots