A 26-year-old tanker carrying 20 million gallons of fuel oil broke apart and sank Tuesday off the coast of Spain in one of the region’s richest fishing areas.
The Exxon Valdez spilled half that amount when it ran aground off the coast of Alaska in 1989. If the oil from the downed Prestige escapes its storage tanks, it would become one of the worst oil spills in history.
The ship’s load of heavy fuel oil may be less toxic than the crude oil carried by the Exxon Valdez. But the heaviness of the oil means that it persists in the environment because it’s less likely to evaporate.
It’s ”one of the worst types of oil to have to deal with in terms of cleanups” because it’s so sticky, said Stewart Wade of the American Bureau of Shipping.
Three storms with winds blowing east are headed toward the region. If more oil leaks, it could be blown toward the Spanish coast.
The tanker sank roughly 150 miles off Galicia, a northwestern province of Spain. By late Tuesday, it had fouled 120 miles of coastline.
The sea floor is 2.4 miles deep where the tanker sank, said Earth scientist Dale Sawyer of Rice University in Houston. The pressure is so great at that depth that if the tanker’s oil compartments had any air in them, they ”would be breached,” Sawyer said.
As much as 2.6 million gallons of oil has escaped. Authorities have closed 60 miles of Galicia’s coast to fishing, and Spanish workers are trying to clean the rocky coast.
More than 100 oil-coated birds had been taken ashore for treatment. The tanker sank close to Spain’s Atlantic Islands Nature Park, a marine sanctuary dotted with islands. Seabirds nest there, and the islands are home to unique species of flora and fauna.
The Prestige is registered in the Bahamas. It was operated by a Greek shipping company and carried oil owned by a Swiss company. Its destination was Singapore.
The tanker had picked up the oil in Latvia and was heading toward Gibraltar when a storm damaged it last Wednesday. The Prestige was being towed by tugboats when it broke apart Tuesday. Both Portugal and Spain had barred the tugboats from towing it into their ports.
The Prestige had a single hull. Modern tankers have double hulls to prevent accidents. Single-hulled tankers are being phased out beginning 2005, when the Prestige was to be decommissioned
Traci Watson, USA TODAY
