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Tanker sinking portends spill calamity
By MAR ROMAN, Associated Press MADRID, Spain -- Millions of gallons of fuel oil that sank in the Atlantic inside a broken tanker ship might solidify in the deep, frigid water, limiting short-term environmental damage to the Spanish coast, experts say. Environmentalists, however, fear an uglier outcome for the sticky, toxic cargo of the Bahamas-flagged Prestige, which went down Tuesday with most of its original 20 million gallon cargo. '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 Greenpeace's coastal protection project. 'There's nothing that makes us believe it won't finally burst and leak all its oil.' The single-hulled ship was carrying nearly twice the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989. After six days at sea, the leaking, 26-year-old tanker broke in two pieces and sank in 11,550 feet of water about 150 miles off the scenic coast of Spain's Galicia region. It started leaking Wednesday after being ruptured in a storm, blackening beaches and killing wildlife along a 125-mile stretch of Spanish coastline. The Spanish government estimates it leaked 800,000 to 1 million gallons of oil at the outset of the disaster, and about the same amount as it went down, about the same amount it spilled at the outset of the disaster. Fuel oil, used to power ship engines and electricity plants, is on average harder to clean up than crude oil, experts say. Crude oil disperses in sea water, but fuel oil turns to sticky lumps. 'It's a big, sticky, gooey mess; a bit like molten asphalt,' said Unni Einemo, senior editor at Bunkerworld, a London-based news service for the marine fuels industry. The hope is that most of the fuel oil went down with the ship. 'If it sinks into cold water, this stuff solidifies so much that it basically stays there,' said Einemo. Jose Luis Garcia Fierro, a petroleum chemist at the Council for Scientific Research, Spain's top scientific body, said that if the oil does in fact solidify because of the low temperature and high pressure, 'of all the worst consequences, that is the least bad.' Presumably the ship has gone all the way down to the seabed, but if it is floating underwater it will continue to leak oil, Garcia Fierro was quoted as saying by the national news agency Efe. At stake in Spain's misty, green northwest corner is a fishing and seafood industry that feeds much of the country and does more than $330 million in business each year. It employs tens of thousands of people who catch, process or sell everything from monkfish to mussels. The ship's rupture and sinking has raised questions about older, single-hull ships like the Prestige that are due to be phased out by 2015. The European Union charged Tuesday that ships like the Prestige skirt European ports to avoid tough new EU-mandated inspection rules, and it urged national governments to work harder to enforce them. The Prestige, owned by Mare Shipping Inc., of the Bahamas, was bound for Singapore when the storm hit. The American Bureau of Shipping, a Houston-based registration company that makes sure shipping papers are in order, said the Prestige was up to date with its inspections. The vessel, built in 1976, is operated by the Greece-based Universe Maritime, Ltd. The ship's last annual survey was carried out in Dubai in May, and a full drydock inspection was carried out in China in May, 2001, ABS said. Soldiers and volunteers on Tuesday were still cleaning up the beaches between Cape Finisterre north to the city of A Coruna. Dozens of inlets and coves 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,' said Ezequiel Navio, from the World Wildlife Fund's Spanish branch ADENA. The government declined to estimate economic or ecological damage. The government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was quick to order the Prestige out of Spanish waters after last Wednesday's leak, and refused to let it enter any Spanish port for repairs. Nor would Portugal, for the same safety reasons.
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