Laurie
01-02-03, 03:37 PM
French Clean Oil from Beaches, Bigger Slicks Lurk
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=574&ncid=574&e=1&u=/nm/20030102/wl_nm/environment_france_oilspill_dc_8
PARIS (Reuters) - Police, firefighters and troops began cleaning up globs of oil on Thursday that have washed up on French Atlantic beaches from the sunken tanker Prestige, as bigger oil slicks lurked out at sea.
Gooey, black fuel oil swept ashore this week on beaches in the Landes region near Bordeaux, southwest France, and has now drifted as far north as Ile de Re -- a popular holiday island near La Rochelle, officials said.
A dozen slicks, leaking from the submerged tanker off the northwest Spanish coast, have now floated to within 100 km (60 miles) of the French coast, some 200 km closer than they were on Tuesday, authorities said.
Ecology Minister Roselyne Bachelot warned that strong winds expected on Thursday and Friday could sweep the slicks into the Gironde estuary, just north of Bordeaux, in the next few days.
"What I feared has happened," Bachelot was quoted on Thursday as saying in Le Parisien newspaper.
"There is a mass of oil slicks from several meters square to several tens of meters square at the same latitude as Bordeaux and the same longitude as Santander in Spain. If the weather forecasts are maintained, these slicks could wash up in the Gironde estuary around January 5," she said.
Teams of workers in protective clothing used sticks to scoop up lumps of oil from the Landes beaches, which are popular with surfers and holidaymakers in an area dependent on tourism.
The oil is the first to reach France from the Prestige, which sank in November.
They also scoured beaches further north after oil patches were spotted further up the coast.
Tests showed that oil is also from the Prestige, and the maritime authority in the northwest port of Brest said it was launching a criminal inquiry to establish responsibility.
The Prestige was laden with 77,000 tons of oil when it sprang a leak on November 13 and sank six days later after breaking in half.
The wreck spewed thousands of tons of oil into Spain's richest fishing grounds and onto the picturesque northwest Galician coastline. Spanish media have estimated the oil slicks sweeping toward France cover an area the size of New York City.
For the French, the sight of oil on their beaches revives painful memories of the 1999 spill from the tanker Erika which sank off the Brittany coast causing some $860 million damage.
A French mini-submarine has plugged some of the cracks in the hull of the Prestige, now lying 3.5 km beneath the sea about 130 nautical miles west of Spain, but has not been able to work for the past week because of bad weather.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais said the American Bureau of Shipping was investigating repairs carried out on the Prestige in China in May 2001. The repairs, approved by the bureau at the time, involved putting new steel plates on a corroded section of the hull, which is the same section that cracked in November.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=574&ncid=574&e=1&u=/nm/20030102/wl_nm/environment_france_oilspill_dc_8
PARIS (Reuters) - Police, firefighters and troops began cleaning up globs of oil on Thursday that have washed up on French Atlantic beaches from the sunken tanker Prestige, as bigger oil slicks lurked out at sea.
Gooey, black fuel oil swept ashore this week on beaches in the Landes region near Bordeaux, southwest France, and has now drifted as far north as Ile de Re -- a popular holiday island near La Rochelle, officials said.
A dozen slicks, leaking from the submerged tanker off the northwest Spanish coast, have now floated to within 100 km (60 miles) of the French coast, some 200 km closer than they were on Tuesday, authorities said.
Ecology Minister Roselyne Bachelot warned that strong winds expected on Thursday and Friday could sweep the slicks into the Gironde estuary, just north of Bordeaux, in the next few days.
"What I feared has happened," Bachelot was quoted on Thursday as saying in Le Parisien newspaper.
"There is a mass of oil slicks from several meters square to several tens of meters square at the same latitude as Bordeaux and the same longitude as Santander in Spain. If the weather forecasts are maintained, these slicks could wash up in the Gironde estuary around January 5," she said.
Teams of workers in protective clothing used sticks to scoop up lumps of oil from the Landes beaches, which are popular with surfers and holidaymakers in an area dependent on tourism.
The oil is the first to reach France from the Prestige, which sank in November.
They also scoured beaches further north after oil patches were spotted further up the coast.
Tests showed that oil is also from the Prestige, and the maritime authority in the northwest port of Brest said it was launching a criminal inquiry to establish responsibility.
The Prestige was laden with 77,000 tons of oil when it sprang a leak on November 13 and sank six days later after breaking in half.
The wreck spewed thousands of tons of oil into Spain's richest fishing grounds and onto the picturesque northwest Galician coastline. Spanish media have estimated the oil slicks sweeping toward France cover an area the size of New York City.
For the French, the sight of oil on their beaches revives painful memories of the 1999 spill from the tanker Erika which sank off the Brittany coast causing some $860 million damage.
A French mini-submarine has plugged some of the cracks in the hull of the Prestige, now lying 3.5 km beneath the sea about 130 nautical miles west of Spain, but has not been able to work for the past week because of bad weather.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais said the American Bureau of Shipping was investigating repairs carried out on the Prestige in China in May 2001. The repairs, approved by the bureau at the time, involved putting new steel plates on a corroded section of the hull, which is the same section that cracked in November.