Prestige (ship)
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The Prestige was an oil tanker that sank in the Atlantic off the north-west coast of Spain in November 2002 . It caused one of the largest oil spills ever caused by a ship on the Spanish and French coasts.
History of the ship
The ship was built in 1976 at Hitachi Zosen in Maizuru with hull number 4437. The ship commissioned as Gladys was the Monarch Tanker Corporation from Liberia. The tanker, which is 243.49 m long and 34.55 m wide, was measured at 40,632 gross register tons when it was built and had a maximum draft of 14.07 m and a carrying capacity of 79,900 t. The American Bureau of Shipping was responsible for classifying the ship during construction and throughout its subsequent operating life. The ship was in service as a Gladys for Monarch Tankers until 1988 and was reflagged to Panama and re-measured, whereby its deadweight increased to 81,554 t. After being sold to the Lancer Corporation in Piraeus, the ship was renamed Prestige in 1988 . In the 1990s, Mare Shipping Incorporated in Liberia acquired the ship without renaming it. In 1994 the Prestige was changed to the Bahamas. After that, Laurel Sea Transport initially managed the ship, later Mare Shipping had the Prestige operated by the Greek shipping company Universe Maritime Limited.
The classification society ABS subjected the ship to the fifth "Special Survey" (detailed examination every five years) in Guangzhou in May 2001 and found it to be seaworthy in an "Annual Survey" (examination every year) in Dubai on May 25, 2002. On July 19, 2001, the classification society Bureau Veritas issued the ship a certificate of safe ship operation according to the ISM code , which was valid until June 20, 2006 . The Gladys was, as usual at the time of its construction, designed as a single-hull ship. It was built after the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) in 1973 but before it came into force in 1982. Since the Prestige was not a double-hulled ship , according to the stricter MARPOL rules adopted in April 2001 (specifically rule 13G) she should have been taken out of service by March 11, 2005 at the latest.
Average in November 2002
In November 2002 the Prestige was on its way from Ventspils to Singapore with a cargo of 77,000 t heavy oil from the charterer Crown Resources . On November 13th, she was damaged in a storm off the Spanish coast. Through a leak , water penetrated two ballast tanks on the starboard side , whereupon the ship was listed at 24 °. To prevent capsizing, two port ballast tanks were flooded. This increased the load on the trunk and threatened to break through. Oil leaked from a 35 m long crack. Spanish authorities denied the ship the right to enter a port. They mistakenly assumed that this would minimize the impact on Spanish coastlines. In fact, a polluted harbor would have been a far lesser evil; the escaping oil could have been better collected or pumped out there. Instead, the Prestige was towed out to sea. On November 19, the hull finally broke and the ship sank. The crew was saved beforehand.
Consequences for the environment
In the Prestige disaster , a total of around 64,000 t of heavy fuel oil leaked and polluted 2900 km of the French and Spanish coasts, especially on the Costa da Morte . About 250,000 seabirds died from the leaked oil.
The wreck lies 166 nautical miles off the Spanish coast at a depth of 3,600 m. In the two years after the sinking, most of the leaks have been sealed by underwater robots. The 13,000 tonnes of oil remaining in the wreck were pumped out and replaced by a solution containing microbacteria that accelerated the decomposition of oil residues. The campaign, which cost around 100 million euros, was successfully completed on September 12, 2004.
Ten years after the accident, nature is said to have completely recovered off the Galician coast. According to a newspaper report, no genetic damage was found in plants or animals. However, according to a scientific study from 2014, the breeding success of the oil-contaminated colonies of shagfish was still reduced by 45% ten years later.
Legal process
The Spanish government has sued the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) classification society for $ 1 billion in damages . Before a US court, however, reports were presented according to which a monster wave was the likely cause of the accident.
On October 16, 2012, the trial of three Prestige crew members (captain, machinist, first officer) began in a court in La Coruña . The captain and the machinist are Greek, the first officer is Filipino and on the run. The then head of the Spanish port authority, José Luis López Sors, was also charged. The trial, in which 133 witnesses and 98 experts were heard, ended in July 2013. The verdict was pronounced on November 13, 2013. Although the defendants, who were all over 70 years old, were not threatened with prison terms because of their age, a conviction was expected that would have made it easier to assert liability claims against the shipping company and its insurance company. The damage caused by the catastrophe (estimated by the public prosecutor to total 4.3 billion euros) had so far been largely paid for by the Spanish state. The public prosecutor's office demanded long prison terms of between five and twelve years. The court acquitted all defendants of the charge of environmental crimes. Only the captain was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment for "disobedience" because he initially refused the instructions of the authorities to move the ship out to sea.
In a supreme instance, Captain Apostolos Mangouras was sentenced to two years in prison on January 26, 2016 in Madrid for accepting the marine casualty by leading the tanker into a threatening situation, although he knew exactly about its structural weakness and because the ship was overloaded with at least 2000 tons of oil. Evidence was found that Stratos Kostazos, the previous captain of the Prestige , had criticized the poor condition of the ship and refused to continue to operate the ship. The court also stated that two major oil companies, Repsol and BP, had opposed using the tanker. The court also found the London P&I Club ( Protection and Indemnity Insurance) and the ship owner Mare Shipping to be guilty of the accident. The London P&I Club was sentenced by a Spanish court to pay $ 1 billion in damages on November 15, 2017. The Spanish Supreme Court ( Tribunal Supremo ) upheld the judgment on December 20, 2018, and set the total amount to be reimbursed at 1.5 billion euros.
See also
Web links
- Ship Structure Committee Case Study - PRESTIGE: Complete hull failure in a single-hull tanker (English)
- EU motion for a resolution 20021119
- www.wrecksite.eu: bow section
- www.wrecksite.eu: rear part
Footnotes
- ^ Lloyd's Register, various years
- ↑ a b Phaseout of singlehull tank vessels: hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Eighth Congress, first session, on Jan. 9, 2003 , Diane Publishing, Washington, 2006, p 93ff.
- ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 417/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of February 18, 2002 for the accelerated introduction of double hulls or equivalent design requirements for single-hull oil tankers and for the repeal of Regulation (EC) No. 2978/94 of the Council
- ↑ Ralf Streck: The forgotten oil spill , June 11, 2010, at Telepolis
- ↑ Hubert Kahl: Shipwreck is still losing oil , dpa, November 18, 2007
- ↑ Five years after the accident: "Prestige" is still spitting poison at Die Presse , November 13, 2007
- ↑ We Outraged - a visit ten years later ; In Das Magazin , issue 6/2013
- ↑ Álvaro Barros, David Álvarez, Alberto Velando: Long-term reproductive impairment in a seabird after the Prestige oil spill , Biol. Lett., April 2014, Vol. 10, No. 4.
- ↑ Axel Bojanowski: "Prestige" catastrophe: Monster waves are said to have sunk tankers at Spiegel-online, December 15, 2006
- ↑ a b FAZ.net November 12, 2013: The culprits are missing in the dock
- ^ "Prestige": proceedings ended , THB - Deutsche Schiffahrts-Zeitung , July 12, 2013.
- ↑ Lots of acquittals and a blow from the nose FAZ.net, November 13, 2013, accessed on November 13, 2013.
- ↑ Paul Day: Spanish court sentences captain of sunken Prestige oil tanker to two years , Reuters , January 26, 2016. (English)
- ↑ Prestige Captain Convicted of Recklessness at The Maritime Executive , January 26, 2016. (English)
- ↑ Lucy Burton: British insurer faces $ 1bn fine over gigantic Prestige oil spill , In: The Telegraph , November 15, 2017 (English)
- ↑ Spain's judiciary confirmed: Billions in compensation for "Prestige" misfortune. In: tagesschau.de. December 20, 2018, accessed December 19, 2018 .