Portugal says sunken tanker still leaking oil
Date: 26-Nov-02
Country: PORTUGAL
Spain has taken issue with the Portuguese navy's reports. Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said on Saturday there was only a thin film of oil where the tanker went down.
The Prestige, a 26-year-old, single-hulled tanker, broke up and sank on Tuesday, carrying 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil - twice the amount spilled when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989 creating environmental disaster.
Captain Augusto Ezequiel, technical director of the navy's Hydrographic Institute, said navy aircraft monitoring the site, about 220 km (135 miles) west of Spain's Galician coast, sighted a slick about three kms long and a few hundred metres (yards) wide on Saturday.
"There was leakage detected at the site. It was still coming up at the site where the ship sank," he said, adding the leakage was not steady and could stop when the wreck stabilised.
Ezequiel said a navy aircraft would fly over the site on Sunday to report on any new leakage.
Foreign Minister Antonio Martins da Cruz declined to comment on Spain's assertion that there was no new leakage.
"I myself, the Portuguese government, entirely trust the observations that are being made by the navy's Hydrographic Institute," he told private TSF radio.
Martins da Cruz said he had proposed to Spain that the two countries set up a warning system to help prevent more wrecks like that of the Prestige.
The Prestige was holed in a storm off northwestern Spain 11 days ago. It left a trail of oil while being towed out to sea before sinking in deep Atlantic waters.
Oil has washed up along a wide stretch of Spain's Galician coast, coating seabirds and endangering shellfish stocks vital to the local economy.