COASTAL nations will have to provide a safe haven for ships in difficulties, under proposals being considered by the International Maritime Organization, the UN agency that regulates the world’s shipping.
The proposals are partly designed to prevent a rerun of what happened to the oil tanker Prestige, which split in two and sank 200 kilometres off the Spanish coast. Five months after the wreck, oil from the tanker is still washing up on holiday beaches in France and Spain.
When cracks began to appear in the Prestige’s hull, Spain closed its ports to the ship, forcing it to be towed out to sea. At the time scientists were divided over whether the oil would cause more damage if released near the coast or farther out at sea.
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Maritime specialists argue that it is always easier to save a ship’s crew or salvage its cargo if it is near the coast and in calm water. Speaking in London last week, Bill O’Neil, secretary-general of the IMO, pointed out that even the Prestige survived “six days of severe punishment from the weather as she was towed out into the Atlantic” after the cracks started to appear.
In its analysis of the accident, the American Bureau of Shipping, which undertook the Prestige’s last annual survey, said last month that if “the vessel had been afforded a safe refuge…it would have remained intact and afloat for a sustained period, certainly long enough to light the oil cargo off the vessel”. The IMO will consider the proposals at its meeting in November.
The Prestige is not the first ship to be turned away from port when it needed help. Spain was one of five countries to refuse the Castor access to its ports in January 2001 after it developed a 20-metre crack in its hull. It toured the Mediterranean for a month before its cargo of 25,000 tonnes of petrol was transferred to another tanker off Malta.
