2002 environmental disaster off the coast of Galicia, Spain
The
Prestige
oil spill
occurred off the coast of
Galicia
,
Spain
in November 2002, caused by the sinking of the 26-year-old, structurally deficient
oil tanker
MV
Prestige
, carrying 77,000
tonnes
of
heavy fuel oil
. During a storm, it burst a tank on 13 November, and French, Spanish, and Portuguese governments refused to allow the ship to dock. The vessel subsequently sank on 19 November, about 210 kilometres (130 mi) from the coast of Galicia. It is estimated that it
spilled
60,000 tonnes or a volume of 67,000 m
3
(17.8 million US gal) of heavy fuel oil.
[1]
The oil spill polluted 2300 kilometers (1429 miles) of
coastline
[2]
and more than one thousand beaches on the Spanish,
French
and
Portuguese
coast, as well as causing great harm to the local
fishing industry
. The spill is the largest
environmental disaster
in the history of both Spain and Portugal. The amount of oil spilled was more than the
Exxon Valdez
incident
and the toxicity was considered higher, because of the higher water temperatures.
In 2007 the
Southern District of New York
dismissed a 2003 lawsuit by the Kingdom of Spain against the
American Bureau of Shipping
, the international classification society which had certified the
Prestige
as in compliance with rules and laws, because ABS was a "person" per the
International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage
and exempt from direct liability for pollution damage. The 2012 trial of the Galicia regional High Court did not find the merchant shipping company, nor the insurer, the
London P&I Club
nor any Spanish government official, but only the Captain of the ship guilty and gave him a nine-month suspended sentence for disobedience. In January 2016 the Spanish Supreme Court held the London P&I Club liable for damages up to the amount of its overall cover for the shipowner for pollution of $1 billion. The Spanish judgment is unlikely to be enforceable due to a UK judgment requiring any claims to be determined via arbitration under UK law. The overall damages awarded by the court in A Coruna in 2017 was just over €1.5bn, a figure confirmed by the Spanish Supreme Court in December 2018.
[3]
Events
[
edit
]
The
Prestige
was a 26-year-old
Greek
-operated, single-
hulled
oil tanker, officially registered in the
Bahamas
, but with a
Liberian
-registered single-purpose corporation as the owner.
The ship had a deadweight tonnage, or carrying capacity, of approximately 81,000 tons, a measurement that put it at the small end of the
Aframax
class of tankers, smaller than most carriers of crude oil but larger than most carriers of refined products. It was
classed
by the
American Bureau of Shipping
and insured by the
London P&I Club
, a shipowners' mutual known as the London Club.
On 13 November 2002, the
Prestige
was carrying 77,000 tonnes of two different grades of heavy fuel oil, crude #4. It encountered a winter storm off
Costa da Morte
, the Coast of Death, in
Galicia
northwestern Spain. The Greek captain, Apostolos Mangouras, reported a loud bang from the starboard side and as the ship began to take on water from high waves the engines shut down and he called for help from Spanish rescue workers. The Filipino crew was evacuated with rescue helicopters and the ship drifted within 6 kilometres (4 mi) of the Spanish coast, already leaking oil. A veteran captain, Serafin Diaz, was lowered onto the ship per the Spanish government's Industry Ministry, to navigate the ship off the Spanish coast northwest, and saw the gaping 15 metres (50 ft) hole on the starboard side. Mangouras argued the ship should be brought into port where the leaking oil might be confined but under the threat of the Spanish navy Mangouras relented.
[1]
After pressure from the French government, the vessel was forced to change its course and head south into Portuguese waters in order to avoid endangering France's southern coast. Fearing for its own shore, the Portuguese authorities ordered its navy to intercept the ailing vessel and prevent it from approaching further.
[4]
[5]
The decision to tow the damaged tanker offshore rather than escort to a sheltered anchorage has been described as a criminal act and the reason why such a large area was polluted.
[6]
With the French, Spanish, and Portuguese governments refusing to allow the ship to dock, and after several days of sailing and towing, it split in half on 19 November 2002. It sank only about 250 kilometres (160 mi) from the Spanish coast, releasing over 64,000 m
3
(17 million US gal) of oil into the sea. An earlier oil slick had already reached the coast. The captain of the
Prestige
was taken into custody, accused of not cooperating with
marine salvage
crews and of harming the environment.
[1]
Leakage and environmental contamination
[
edit
]
The
Prestige
oil spill is Spain's worst ecological disaster.
[7]
After the sinking, the wreck continued to leak approximately 125
tonnes
of oil a day, polluting the seabed and contaminating the coastline, especially along the territory of Galicia. The environmental damage was most severe on the coast of Galicia. The affected area is an important ecological region, supporting
coral reefs
and many species of
sharks
and
birds
, and the fishing industry. The heavy coastal pollution forced the region's government to suspend offshore fishing for six months.
[1]
Initially, the government thought only 17,000 of the tanker's 77,000 tonnes of oil had been lost, and that the remaining 60,000 tonnes would freeze and not leak from the sunken tanker. In early 2003, it announced that half of the oil had been lost. As of August 2003, the figure had risen to about 63,000 tonnes, and more than eighty percent of the tanker's 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil have been spilled off Spain's northwest coast.
[8]
The environmental devastation caused is at least on a par, if not worse, than the
Exxon Valdez
. The amount of oil spilled is more than the
Valdez
and the toxicity is higher, because of the higher temperatures.
In March 2006, new oil slicks were detected near the wreck of the
Prestige
, slicks which investigators found to match the type of oil the
Prestige
carried. A study released in December 2006 led by Jose Luis De Pablos, a physicist at Madrid's Center for Energetic and Environmental Research, concluded that 16,000 to 23,000 tonnes of oil remained in the wreck, as opposed to the 700 to 1300 tonnes claimed by the Spanish government; that
bioremediation
of the remaining oil failed; and that bacteria corroding the hull could soon produce a rupture and quickly release much of the remaining oil and create another catastrophic spill. The report urged the government to take "prompt" action.
[9]
Experts
[
who?
]
predicted marine life could suffer from the pollution for at least ten years due to the type of oil spill, which contained light fractions with
polyaromatic hydrocarbons
and could poison plankton, fish eggs and crustaceans with
carcinogenic
effects in fish and potentially humans as well.
Cleanup
[
edit
]
In the subsequent months, thousands of volunteers joined the public company TRAGSA (the firm chosen by the regional government to deal with the cleanup) to help clean the affected coastline. The massive cleaning campaign was a success, recovering most portions of coastline from not only the effects of the oil spill but also the accumulated "regular" contamination. Galician activists founded the environmental movement
Nunca Mais
(Galician for Never Again), to denounce the passiveness of the conservative government regarding the disaster. A year after the spill, Galicia had more
Blue Flags
for its beaches (an award for those beaches with the highest standards in the world) than in the previous years.
[
citation needed
]
In 2004,
remotely operated vehicles
(ROVs) like the one which originally explored the wreck of the
RMS
Titanic
drilled small holes in the wreck and removed the remaining 13,000 m
3
of cargo oil from the wreck, at 4000 meters below the sea surface. The ROVs also sealed cracks in the tanker's hull, and slowed the leakage to a trickle of 20 litres a day. In total, 20 million US gallons (76,000 m
3
) of oil were spilled.
[
citation needed
]
The oil was then pumped into large aluminium shuttles, specially manufactured for this salvage operation. The filled shuttles were then floated to the surface. The original plan to fill large bags with the oil proved to be too problematic and slow. After the oil removal was completed, a slurry rich in microbiologic agents was pumped into the hold to speed up the breakdown of any remaining oil. The total estimated cost of the operation was over €100 million.
[
citation needed
]
Aftermath
[
edit
]
Investigation
[
edit
]
The massive environmental and financial costs of the spill resulted in an inquiry into how a structurally deficient ship was able to travel out to sea. The
Prestige
had set sail from
St. Petersburg
,
Russia
, without being properly inspected. It traveled to the
Atlantic
via the shallow and vulnerable
Baltic Sea
. A previous captain in St. Petersburg, Esfraitos Kostazos, who complained to the owners about numerous structural deficiencies within the ship was rebuffed, later resigned in protest, and rather than repairing the defects, he was replaced with Mangouras.
[1]
The ownership of the
Prestige
was unclear, making it difficult to determine exactly who was responsible for the oil spill and exposing the difficulties in regulations posed by
flags of convenience
.
[1]
Spanish investigators found that the failure in the hull of the
Prestige
had been predicted already: her two sister ships,
Alexandros
and
Centaur
, had been submitted to extensive inspections under the "Safe Hull" program in 1996. The organization in charge of the inspections, the
American Bureau of Shipping
, found that both
Alexandros
and
Centaur
were in terminal decline. Due to metal fatigue in their hulls, modeling predicted that both ships would fail between frames 61 and 71 within five years.
Alexandros
,
Centaur
and a third sister-ship,
Apanemo
, were scrapped between 1999 and 2002. Little more than five years after the inspection,
Prestige
's hull failed between frames 61 and 71.
[10]
The Spanish government was criticized for its decision to tow the ailing wreck out to sea — where it split in two — rather than into a port. The refusal to allow the ship to take refuge in a sheltered port has been called a major contributing factor to the scale of the disaster.
[7]
World Wildlife Fund
's senior policy officer for shipping Simon Walmsley believed most of the blame lay with the classification society. "It was reported as being substandard at one of the ports it visited before Spain. The whole inspection regime needs to be revamped and double-hulled tankers used instead," he said. The US and most other countries were planning to phase out single-hulled tankers by 2012.
[8]
Plan Galicia
[
edit
]
Plan Galicia
was a set of economic measures adopted by the Spanish
Council of Ministers
on 23 January 2003, in an attempt to mitigate the consequences of the Prestige disaster. Plan Galicia was presented as complementary to the one approved days before by the
Xunta de Galicia
.
Cleanup cost
[
edit
]
A report by the Galicia-based Barrie de la Maza economic institute in 2003 criticised the Spanish government's handling of the catastrophe. It estimated the cost of the clean-up to the Galician coast alone at €2.5 billion.
[8]
The 2013 court ruling put the cost of the disaster at 368 million euros ($494 million) to the Spanish state, 145 million euros to the Spanish region of Galicia and 68 million euros to France.
[
dead link
]
[11]
The clean-up of the
Exxon Valdez
cost US$3 billion (almost €2.2 billion).
Since the disaster, oil tankers similar to the
Prestige
have been directed away from the French and Spanish coastlines. The European Commissioner for Transport at the time, Spaniard
Loyola de Palacio
, pushed for the ban of single-hulled tankers.
[
citation needed
]
Legal consequences
[
edit
]
The immediate legal consequence of the disaster was the arrest of the captain, Captain Mangouras. Captain Mangouras sought refuge for his seriously damaged vessel in a Spanish port. The acceptance of such a request has deep historic roots. Spain refused and launched criminal charges against Mangouras for refusing to comply immediately with the Spanish demand to restart the engines and steam offshore. Bringing the ship into port and booming around her to contain the leaking oil would have been less harmful than sending her back to sea and almost inevitable sinking.
[12]
In May 2003, the Kingdom of Spain brought a civil suit in the
Southern District of New York
against the
American Bureau of Shipping
(ABS), the Houston-based international classification society which had certified the "Prestige" as "in class" for its final voyage. The "in class" status states that the vessel is in compliance with all applicable rules and laws, not that it is safe, fit for purpose, or
seaworthy
.
[13]
For the world maritime industry, a key issue raised by the incident was whether classification societies could be held responsible for the consequences. International maritime trade publications including
TradeWinds
,
Fairplay
and
Lloyd's List
regularly presented the dispute as a possibly precedent-setting one which could prove fateful for international classification societies, whose assets are dwarfed by the scale of claims to which they could become subject. On 2 January 2007, the docket in that lawsuit (SDNY 03-cv-03573) was dismissed. The presiding judge ruled that ABS is a "person" as defined by the
International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage
(CLC) and, as such, is exempt from direct liability for pollution damage. Additionally, the Judge ruled that, since the United States was not a signatory to the International CLC, the US Courts lack the necessary jurisdiction to adjudicate the case. Spain's original damage claim against ABS was some $700 million.
[
citation needed
]
The Galicia regional High Court set the
Prestige
oil spill trial date for October 16, 2012, against officers, the insurer London Club, International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage, the ship's owner, Liberia-based Mare Shipping Inc with its director general. The harbor master of A Coruna at the time, Angel del Real, and a Galician government delegate, Arsenio Fernandez de Mesa, had also been charged with "aggravating the disaster by ignoring technical advice".
[7]
the hearing began on 16 June 2012 and expected to adjourn in November, the tenth anniversary of the disaster. The trial was held in a specially constructed courtroom in A Coruna's exhibition complex. It considered evidence from 133 witnesses and 98 experts.
[7]
[2]
Plaintiffs asked the Greek captain to be sentenced up to 12 years and demanded more than 4 billion euros ($5.0 billion) in damages overall.
[14]
The insurer refused to participate in the Spanish proceedings on the basis that the parties should submit arbitration in England, as per the insurance contract.
[3]
On 16 January 2012, the insurer commenced arbitration in London and on 13 February 2013 (Spain) and 3 July 2013 (France) the Arbitration tribunal upheld the insurers' claims for arbitration in England.
[15]
This was subsequently converted into a judgement by the High Court of England and Wales.
[15]
[3]
In November 2013, the three Galicia High Court judges concluded, it was impossible to establish criminal responsibility, and captain Apostolos Mangouras, chief engineer Nikolaos Argyropoulos and the former head of Spain's Merchant Navy, Jose Luis Lopez, were found not guilty of crimes against the environment. The captain was however accused of disobeying government authorities who wanted the tanker as far from the coast as possible. According to the court, that decision was correct and Mangouras, 78 at the time, was found guilty of disobedience and given a nine-month suspended sentence.
[16]
The Spanish government decided to launch an appeal to the ruling against the exemption from civil liability of the captain.
[17]
On 26 January 2016, Spain's Supreme Court convicted Mangouras of recklessness resulting in catastrophic environmental damage, and sentenced him to two years in prison.
[18]
The criminal conviction against the captain allows far higher compensation claims against the insurers.
[3]
On 15 November 2017, London Club was ordered to pay a $1 billion fine over the oil spill.
[19]
However, given the previous English High Court Judgment, enforcement action appears likely to take place in the UK.
[15]
The success of any enforcement action is uncertain.
[3]
Legacy
[
edit
]
In 2003, the sculpture
A Ferida
" (The Wound) by
Alberto Banuelos
[
nl
]
was erected as a monument to the volunteers who cleaned the Galician beaches of tar and symbolizing the wound to the sea after the massive oil spill.
[20]
At 400 tons, this is the largest sculpture in Spain.
[20]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Frontline/World
Spain, the Lawless Sea
Archived
2017-10-17 at the
Wayback Machine
PBS, January 2004, retrieved November 14, 2013
- ^
a
b
"Spain Prestige oil spill disaster case in court"
.
BBC News
. 16 October 2012.
Archived
from the original on 30 March 2019
. Retrieved
4 February
2016
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Rogers, Marie (16 January 2019).
"The "Prestige" 16 years on…"
. Rogers & Co Abogados, Lawyers.
Archived
from the original on 18 August 2020
. Retrieved
31 May
2020
.
- ^
"
"Prestige" quebrou-se depois de ordens da Marinha portuguesa, diz jornal alemao"
(in Portuguese).
Publico
.
Lusa
. 27 November 2002.
Archived
from the original on 29 March 2020
. Retrieved
29 March
2020
.
- ^
"Portugiesische Marine verantwortlich fur Auseinanderbrechen des Oltankers "Prestige"
"
(in German).
Stern
. 27 November 2002.
Archived
from the original on 29 March 2020
. Retrieved
29 March
2020
.
- ^
Jan Camphuysen, Cornelis (January 2002).
"The Prestige oil spill in Spain"
.
Atlantic Seabirds
: 131?140
. Retrieved
31 May
2020
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Prestige oil spill trial date set 10 years after Galicia coast blighted
Archived
2012-06-21 at the
Wayback Machine
El Pais, 21 June 2012
- ^
a
b
c
d
Gaia Vince
Prestige oil spill far worse than thought
Archived
2004-12-08 at the
Wayback Machine
New Scientist
, August 27, 2003
- ^
Science
, Vol. 314, December 22, 2006, p. 1861.
- ^
Mercado, Francisco,
"El fallo estructural que hundio al 'Prestige' era conocido desde 1996"
El Pais
, June 9, 2008, retrieved June 9, 2008
- ^
AFP, 21 November 2013
- ^
"Monitoring | Media reports | Press condemns tanker disaster"
.
BBC News
. 20 November 2002.
Archived
from the original on 18 July 2014
. Retrieved
15 July
2014
.
- ^
"Classification societies ? their key role"
(PDF)
.
International Association of Classification Societies
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 5 February 2020
. Retrieved
13 November
2020
.
- ^
Trial over Spain Prestige oil disaster ends.
Archived
2017-11-13 at the
Wayback Machine
Phys.org July 10, 2013
- ^
a
b
c
Dixson, Erika (2014).
"WHEN SOVEREIGN NATIONS ARE FORCED TO ARBITRATE: SPAIN AND FRANCE AND THE PRESTIGE OIL SPILL"
.
Arbitration Law Review
. 6 - Yearbook on Arbitration and Mediation: 316?327.
Archived
from the original on 6 August 2020
. Retrieved
31 May
2020
.
- ^
Reuters
Spain Court Clears Captain, Merchant Navy in Prestige Oil Spill
Archived
2013-11-25 at the
Wayback Machine
RigZone, 13 November 2013
- ^
Spain to appeal for damages over Prestige oil spill
Archived
2017-11-13 at the
Wayback Machine
Phys.org, Science X network, November 18, 2013
- ^
"Captain of sunken prestige oil tanker sentenced to prison over 2002 wreck"
.
shipsandports.com.ng
. Reuters. 28 January 2016.
Archived
from the original on 17 November 2017
. Retrieved
16 November
2017
.
- ^
"British insurer faces $1B fine for Prestige oil spill"
.
upi.com
. United Press International, Inc. 15 November 2017.
Archived
from the original on 16 November 2017
. Retrieved
16 November
2017
.
- ^
a
b
Fournier, Alberto Banuelos.
"A Ferida, The Process"
.
Alberto Banuelos Sculptor
. Retrieved
12 January
2023
.
External links
[
edit
]
- Perte totale suite a avarie de coque du petrolier bahameen Prestige survenue dans l'ouest de la Galice
." (
Archive
) -
Bureau d'Enquetes sur les Evenements de Mer
- 13?19 November 2002
(in French)
- Plataforma Nunca Mais
,
Prestige
activists (in Galician)
- Coordination Technical Bureau of Scientific Intervention Program against Accidental Marine Spills
, This bureau is responsible for management and coordination works of research projects.
- Spill Response Experience Coordination Action - SPREEX
This project is responsible for management and coordination research needs in Europe.
- Raul Garcia
The Prestige: one year on, a continuing disaster
WWF, November 2003, 23 pp.
- WWF crisis response page on Prestige
- Prestige Oil Spill - first hand story of a Canadian volunteer, with photos
- Maps and statistics of affected coastal area
- Prestige Ship Structure Casse Study
- Efectos economicos, sociais e ambientais da marea negra do Prestige - Economic, Social and Environmental Effects of the Prestige Spill, Seminario cientifico internacional, Consello da Cultura Galega, 7-8 marzo 2003, edicion bilingue galego-ingles, pdf en acceso abierto
[1]
- Sculpture by Alberto Banuelos Fournier erected in 2003