Spain Investigates after Fire and Sinking of Ship Carrying 1,409mt of Bunkers

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Friday April 17, 2015

Spanish authorities Thursday were said to have launched an investigation into the sinking of a Russian trawler which caught fire laden with bunkers on Sunday, Reuters reports.

The Oleg Naydenov is said to have been carrying 1,409 metric tonnes (mt) of bunkers when it caught fire in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.

Authorities are understood to have towed the ship 15 nautical miles (nm) out to sea when the fire was discovered, an act criticised by environmentalists Greenpeace.

Spain is understood to have delayed three tugboats and two light aircraft as part of its response to the incident.

On Thursday the coast guard was said to be battling a 3.7 mile oil slick extending close to tourist beaches.

Greenpeace said that the spill poses a significant threat to the marine environment there, and argued that spills should be dealt with in ports or bays where effects are easier to contain and clean up.

"The hull and tanks of a ship in such bad condition could already be breaking up under the kind of pressure found at such depths," the group added.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said the area where the ship sunk is known to have deep sea coral and a significant population of bottle nosed dolphins.

Some comparisons have been drawn between the sinking of an oil tanker, the Prestige, which sank off the northwest coast of mainland Spain in 2002 carrying 50 times more oil than in this incident.

On Sunday, the Canadian Coast Guard said its handling a leak of some 2,700 litres of oil from a Cypriot ship over the weekend was "exceptional by international standards."