Wednesday, Nov 20, 2002
Wednesday, Nov 20, 2002 |
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The Bahamas-flagged Prestige, which sprang a leak during a storm last Wednesday, began to split around 8 a.m. (local time) and split fully by mid-morning amid salvage operations about 244 km off Spain's Atlantic coast, said a spokesman for the SMIT salvage company. ``The back part of the boat has sunk,'' said a spokesman, Lars Walder. ``The other part will sink soon.'' He said although an oil slick surrounded the vessel, its tanks appeared to be mostly intact. If the ship spills its entire cargo, it would be nearly twice the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. The tanker was hit by storms with waves around 5 metres, Mr. Walder said. ``We can say goodbye to the ship and its cargo,'' he said. The salvage company estimated that the tanker had lost between 1.3 million gallons and 2.6 million gallons of fuel so far. Its crew members had been airlifted off the ship over the past few days. SMIT said there was a chance some of the oil compartments could remain intact and plunge the 3,600 metres to the sea floor, moderating the spill damage. ``A lot depends on the temperature of the sea. If it drops low enough, the oil could become a solid mass and is not so dangerous,'' a spokeswoman said earlier. If the tanks burst, the oil would likely trigger an ecological catastrophe. ``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 leads the coastal protection project for Greenpeace in Spain. She said this time of the year at sea there are more storms and more currents than usual. ``The vessel cracked in the hull because it was very old. There's nothing makes us believe it won't finally burst and leak all its oil,'' she said.
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