Spain rejects criticism of handling of oil spill
Date: 26-Nov-02
Country: SPAIN
Author: Adrian Croft
But Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy rejected charges of delays and incompetence at a stormy news conference in the northern port of La Coruna, saying government decisions had been timely and resources adequate.
"I don't agree," replied Rajoy, the minister in charge of dealing with the spill, when one journalist said critics were calling Spain's handling of the crisis incompetent.
In the week since thick fuel oil from the Prestige began hitting Spanish beaches, the government has faced growing criticism from environmental groups and the media that efforts to protect the coast have been inadequate and the cleanup slow and disorganised.
The 26-year-old single-hulled tanker, holed in a violent storm 10 days ago, left a trail of oil while being towed out to sea before sinking in deep Atlantic waters on Tuesday.
The thick oil has washed up on beaches and rocks over a 400 km (250 mile) stretch of the dramatic Galician coast, coating seabirds and endangering shellfish stocks vital to the local economy.
Rajoy blamed several days of fierce storms off northwestern Spain for some of the problems. He said a French and a Dutch ship able to scoop up oil from the sea were confined to port as they could not operate in extremely high waves.
"It is not a question of us not having ships available," he said, expressing the hope that the weather would improve enough for the boats to leave port yesterday.
Brushing aside questions over whether Madrid was too slow to seek outside help, Rajoy said a German clean-up ship was due yesterday and others from Britain and Belgium on Tuesday.
Environmentalists have complained that volunteers have not been allowed to take part in the cleanup. Rajoy announced that cleanup teams would be doubled to almost 900 people and volunteers would be given work.
Some 900 tonnes of tarry oil have been scraped off the beaches and Spain has 25 kms of barriers ready to try to protect the coast, he said.
"OIL KILLS"
Outside the news conference, activists from the environmental group Greenpeace held up a banner with "Oil Kills" daubed on it in oil next to buckets of fuel oil recovered from the beaches.
"They should be working more quickly, with more resources and they should remove the slick at sea before it gets to the coast," said Juan Lopez, director of Greenpeace Spain.
Rajoy said the government estimated the Prestige had spilled some 11,000 tonnes of fuel oil, far less than the 20,000 tonnes estimated by Greenpeace. He said the spill could not be described as a "black tide", the Spanish term for a large oil slick, but only as "very localised" patches.
Rajoy said experts believed the rest of the Prestige's 77,000 tonne cargo of fuel oil which went down with the ship would have turned into a solid mass in the chilly ocean depths - meaning it is unlikely to bubble to the surface.
A French mini-submarine will arrive in the "coming days" to investigate whether oil is still leaking from the ship, he said.
Galician newspapers speculated on Saturday that one of 200 logs, lost from a ship in the area shortly before the Prestige got into difficulties, might have damaged the elderly tanker.
The Spanish government has taken issue with the Portuguese Hydrographical Institute's contention that the sunken Prestige is still leaking oil. Rajoy insisted there was only a very thin film of oil where the Prestige sank, 220 kms west of Spain.
There was a larger slick 190 kms from the coast and two other slicks closer to the shoreline, he said.
(Additional reporting by Emma Ross-Thomas).
