The Prestige, an oil tanker carrying 70,000 metric tons of fuel oil that split in two yesterday 150 miles off the Atlantic coast of Spain, sank later in the day, prompting warnings of a major environmental disaster reaching the Spanish and Portuguese coasts.

Activists and experts said last night that the oil will inescapably leak and rise to the surface, threatening what the London Guardian calls one of Europe's richest fishing grounds and most unspoiled coasts.  The oil that leaked before the tanker sank is already causing huge, destructive slicks, according to fishermen's reports.

"If all that escapes from the hull," WWF's Christopher Hails said of the 70,000 metric tons, "then this is a disaster which is going to have twice the effect of the Exxon Valdez, which is one of the worst that we have known."  The Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989.

Fishermen cited by the Guardian condemned Spain's handling of the situation.  Spain and Portugal both refused requests for the tanker to be taken to a harbor and the fuel transferred to another vessel.  Salvage company SMIT, which was towing the Prestige south and west when it cracked and ultimately sank, had offered to tow it to Africa if necessary.

According to the Guardian, the split may have come at a point where the ship's hull had been rewelded earlier.  The Prestige is also believed responsible for a spill off the United States in 1993, according to the U.S. Coast Guard Web site.

Lloyd's List industrial editor David Osler told the Guardian that tankers built in Japan in the 1970s, like the Prestige, were "churned out, mass-produced using steel turned out to the lowest possible standard."  About 300 of the world's 1,800 oil tankers are pre-1980, single-hulled and Japanese-made, Osler said.

French President Jacques Chirac called for "draconian" measures to prevent similar spills in the future, saying he is "horrified by the inability of those in charge, politically, nationally and particularly at European level, to take action" (Tremlett/Bowcott, London Guardian, Nov. 20).

The European Union has moved to outlaw single-hull tankers like the Prestige, which are more vulnerable to spills than double-hull vessels, but the ban does not go into effect until 2015.  Reuters reports that dealers continue to charter old tankers in order to get lower shipping rates.

According to Reuters, major oil companies have stricter standards for tankers than smaller operations such as Crown Resources, the Alfa Group-owned company that chartered the Prestige.  BP said the Prestige failed to pass its tests in 2000 (Stefano Ambrogi, Reuters/Environmental News Network, Nov. 20).