Portugal’s Communist Party is suspicious that the legislation put in place to monitor and control heavy shipping off the Algarve coast has not been enacted.
The concern from the PCP’s parliamentary group is that any accident involving an oil tanker may lead to a similar disaster to the Prestige* that sank in 2002 and deposited 63,000 tonnes of crude oil into the sea and onto 3,000 kilometres of shoreline in Portugal, Spain and France.
The PCP again has warned the government about the number of ships carrying hydrocarbons off the Algarve, "Along the Portuguese coast, and in particular off the Algarve coast, there are some of the busiest international shipping lanes which are used by oil tankers. In the event of oil spills, impacts on the environment and marine ecosystems could be very serious."
In May 2016, the Communists presented a draft resolution to parliament that recommended the tightening of monitoring and risk prevention measures for shipping carrying hydrocarbons off the Portuguese coast.
This recommendation was approved on 1 July 2016, but after more than 17 months, nothing has been done to implement the agreed measures.
Communist Pary MPs, Paulo Sá and João Ramos, yet again have had to ask the Minister of the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino, what is going on and why the hold up?
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*The Prestige was a Greek-operated, single-hulled oil tanker, officially registered in the Bahamas, but with a Liberian-registered single-purpose corporation as the owner.
The ship had a deadweight tonnage, or carrying capacity, of approximately 81,000 tons, a measurement that put it at the small end of the Aframax class of tankers, smaller than most carriers of crude oil but larger than most carriers of refined products.
The French, Spanish and Portuguese governments refused to allow the Prestige to dock in their ports.
On November 13, 2002, while the Prestige was carrying 77,000 metric tons of cargo of two different grades of heavy fuel oil, one of its twelve tanks burst during a storm off Galicia, in northwestern Spain. Fearing that the ship would sink, the captain called for help from Spanish rescue workers, with the expectation that the vessel would be brought into harbour.
However, pressure from local authorities forced the captain to steer the embattled ship away from the coast and head northwest. Reportedly after pressure from the French government, the vessel was once again forced to change its course and head south into Portuguese waters in order to avoid endangering France's southern coast.
Fearing for its own shore, the Portuguese authorities promptly ordered its navy to intercept the ailing vessel and prevent it from approaching further.
With the French, Spanish and Portuguese governments refusing to allow the ship to dock in their ports, the integrity of the single-hulled oil tanker was quickly deteriorating and soon the storm took its toll when it was reported that a 40-foot (12 metre) section of the starboard hull had broken off, releasing a substantial amount of oil.
At around 8:00 a.m. on November 19, the ship split in half. It sank the same afternoon, releasing over 20 million US gallons (76,000 m3) of oil into the sea. The oil tanker was reported to be about 250 kilometres from the Spanish coast at that time. An earlier oil slick had already reached the coast.
The Greek captain of the Prestige, Apostolos Mangouras, was taken into custody, accused of not cooperating with salvage crews and of harming the environment.
After the sinking, the wreck continued leaking oil. It leaked approximately 125 tons of oil a day, polluting the seabed and contaminating the coastline, especially along the territory of Galicia. The affected area is not only a very important ecological region, supporting coral reefs and many species of sharks and birds, but it also supports the fishing industry.
The heavy coastal pollution forced the region's government to suspend offshore fishing for six months.
