Preventing another Prestige: why an end to single-hull ships could be on horizon

Date: 22/05/03

By Karen Carstens

The sinking of Prestige, and the ecological disaster that followed, has brought a sense of urgency to efforts by the European Commission to improve the safety of vessels

THE European Union is not, as a rule, noted for its swift policymaking action. The legislative process in Brussels has been compared to a heavily-laden tanker turning round 360 degrees at sea.

In truth, it is nowhere near that fast.

Ironically, one notable exception to the rule was triggered by an accident involving a heavily-laden oil tanker - the Prestige.

The Liberian-owned, single-hulled tanker shed virtually her entire load of 70,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil after breaking up off the north-west coast of Spain on 19 November last year.

The resulting slick caused an ecological catastrophe, with oil contaminating some of Spain's richest fishing grounds and washing up on pristine beaches in Galicia, Asturias and Cantabria.

There were strong demands for urgent action - and the European Commission was quick to respond.

Within a month, it put forward a proposal calling for tougher targets to banish single-hull tankers from EU waters.

Transport ministers reached political agreement on the measures in March and the European Parliament's transport committee took them on board in late April. The measures are expected to be adopted at the next Parliamentary plenary session in Strasbourg (2-5 June), with transport ministers giving their final approval shortly thereafter.

"If there were blue ribands for speed [in EU policymaking], we'd all definitely deserve one for this, because it has been one of the fastest legislative processes we've had in a while," said German MEP Willi Piecyk, who is guiding the proposal through the Parliament as rapporteur.

"It could still be finalized under the Greek presidency [until the end of June]."

He freely admits, though, that "without public pressure we probably wouldn't have been this fast - member states really moved on this because the spotlight was on the oil slicks".

Piecyk, a Social Democrat from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's windswept northern-most state that lies wedged between the Baltic and North seas just below Denmark, said oil from the Prestige is still washing up along Spain's north-west coast.

The new regulation, which member states will have to adopt immediately and which could enter into force by early autumn, calls for a gradual phase-out of single-hull tankers such as the Prestige and gives specific deadlines for their replacement by safer, double-hull versions. These have a complete second surround so that if the outer part of a ship is damaged, the cargo will not leak out.

The regulation builds upon two sets of measures - known as the 'Erika I' and 'Erika II' packages - agreed in 2000 following the Erika tanker spill off the Brittany coast in December 1999.

The Bahamas-registered Prestige was carrying twice as much oil as the Exxon Valdez, which caused one of the world's worst environmental disasters when it ran aground after trying to avoid icebergs off Alaska in 1989. The US responded in 1990 by banning single-hull oil tankers from approaching its coastline.

"If you look at the US record since then, there have been no major oil spills," Roberto Ferrigno, EU policy director at the European Environmental Bureau, said after the Prestige disaster. "We don't see why the EU has not done something similar."

Now it has: while the EU lacks something akin to America's post-Valdez 'Oil Pollution Act', an amendment tacked on to the new regulation calls for an immediate ban of single-hulled vessels carrying heavy fuel oil from all EU ports.

Moreover, MEPs in a landmark vote earlier this month approved the environmental liability directive - partly inspired by the Erika and Prestige disasters - that reinforces the 'polluter pays' principle by making firms responsible for environmental blunders by footing clean-up bills.

MEPs decided that the principle should apply to transport of materials at sea, but member states will still need to sign off on this.

The shipping industry as such, however, will not fall under the new environmental liability regime. Instead, it has to abide by rules set by the London-based International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the UN body that oversees international shipping. These regulations will be up for review, after a yet-to-be determined trial period of either five or six years.

Member states would then have to agree whether the IMO rules or the EU's environmental liability directive should take precedence. Alfons Guinier, secretary-general of the European Community Shipowners' Association (ECSA), said ports of refuge are desperately needed along all the EU's coastlines as an additional measure to prevent future accidents.

"The Prestige disaster could have been avoided if the Spanish authorities had allowed the vessel to be hauled into a port instead of out to sea," he said, adding that SMIT Salvage, the Dutch company called in for the task, repeatedly requested access to a Spanish port.

Guinier is also quick to emphasize that 90 of global trade relies on shipping, meaning that strict international safety measures must be maintained and followed by all flag states. In this vein, Piecyk said EU maritime safety measures must be spurred on at the IMO.

He is optimistic, now that member states are doing more than just talking tough on maritime safety, that the European Commission could push through the EU's single-hull regulation at the IMO by the end of the year.

"A European regulation will always be second best compared to an international one," he said. "That's the trouble with shipping in the first place: for years there has been this 'pirates hitting the high seas' attitude, that once you leave the coast, you can do whatever you want."

The single-hull regulation may be wending its way through Brussels' bureaucratic machine at a fast clip, but Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio criticized member states after the Prestige disaster, underlining a lack of will among most of them to adopt the Erika I and Erika II measures in the first place.

These also included an increase in the number and scope of in-port ship inspections, improved coordination between national agencies responsible for maritime safety in Union waters and the establishment of an EU agency for maritime safety (see page 19).

Prestige, however, appears to have brought a renewed sense of urgency in making real commitments to enhanced maritime safety. As de Palacio's spokesman Gilles Gantelet put it: "We are in a new century, we are no longer in the time of beautiful boats and pirates when we were just taken everywhere by the wind. We've got big traffic with polluting products. These are ecological time bombs."