Robot salvage plan for sunken tanker

By CATHERINE FIELD

PARIS - In a first, European salvage experts plan to use robots to descend 3500m to the severed sections of the Prestige, a Liberian tanker which sank in the eastern Atlantic last November with 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil onboard.

The decrepit single-hulled vessel spilt more than 42,000 tonnes of oil after it foundered 270km off northwestern Spain, polluting thousands of kilometres of coastline from Galicia to Brittany.

After the disaster, a specialised mini submarine operated by the French oceanographic institute, Ifremer, was lowered to the wreck to patch up the worst cracks.

But that left 35,000 tonnes of oil still on board the tanker's fore and aft sections, which is seeping out at the rate of one or two tonnes a day. Environmentalists fear a second disaster.

Tackling this threat is Spanish company Repsol, which has put together a taskforce of 40 European experts.

Their first task will be to design and build a new generation of remote-controlled underwater vehicles, able to work in pressures so intense that divers or existing robots are useless.

They will attempt to make a hole in the wreck, to which they will attach a large bag about 5m wide and 20m long.

The oil should, in theory, flow into this, because it is less dense than water. When full, the bag will be shuttled to the surface, emptied and sent down again.

Repsol's backup schemes are even more ambitious. One is to erect a canopy around the wreck, catch rising oil and pump it to the surface. As a last resort, it might be possible to pump oil straight from the Prestige.

The plans posed huge difficulties, said Ian White, managing director of the London-based International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation.

"It's unproven technology," he said.

Oil has been pumped from sunken tankers before, in the case of the Erika, which sank off the coast of Brittany, France, in 1999. But the Erika had settled in just 120m of water.

This time around, the challenges include preventing the bag or canopy from collapsing under the pressure of 3500m of water, maintaining the salvage ships' position above the wreck and ensuring that the oil, which is thick and treacly at chilly depths, keeps flowing.

The job, priced at €280 million ($560.6 million), has to be completed before the autumn gales begin in October.

"It's good that they're taking action, but it's a shame that the decision's been taken so late," said Simon Cripps, director of the Worldwide Fund for Nature's marine programme.

"While the [Spanish] Government has been indecisive about getting the oil off, the chances of a catastrophic loss have increased."

Protests about the Spanish Government's handling of the accident have been held on Spain's Atlantic coast and in Madrid. Coastal residents of the Aquitaine region, southwestern France, and the Brittany peninsula are outraged. The Prestige is the second major oil spill to hit them in three years. A demonstration will be held in Brussels on June 14 to lobby for European Union aid.

Tens of thousands of jobs in France and Spain have either been lost or are at risk, in sectors ranging from the oyster and mussel industry to fishing and tourism. Fist-sized lumps of congealed oil last week washed up on the beaches of Brittany at the start of the holiday season.

"We don't want to make too much of a fuss about it but we should have been told about this problem," said a woman visitor to Belle-Ile-en-Mer. "We've got three beach towels which are now ruined. Who is going to pay for that?"

Spanish biologists fear that the plankton on which migrating shoals of anchovies feast may have been killed; as many as 200,000 seabirds have died or sickened; and it will take years for shoreline biodiversity to recover.

As for the final bill, Spain says the spill has already cost it more than US$1 billion in compensation payments and cleanup costs. France has spent €50 million to clean up the beaches of Aquitaine.

The region has earmarked €17 million for continuing the cleanup. Another €1.4 million is being spent on advertising campaigns to deter holiday cancellations.

The chances of legal redress for the disaster are remote. That means, ultimately, that the European taxpayer will have to foot most of the bill.