Talk:Prestige oil spill

Questions and comments

• The caption of the current photo is wrong... those people cannot be cleaning the coastline in March 2002 since the ship sank in November. --SugarKane (talk) 17:02, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

• Which ton? Patrick 12:27 Dec 11, 2002 (UTC)

• I heard on the news that the EU voted to ban single-hulled tankers earlier than planned shortly after these events -- late novemeber 02.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarquin (talk • contribs) 10:59, 11 December 2002

• Badly named page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.24.55.241 (talk • contribs) 12:27 Dec 11, 2002 (UTC)

• This article complains about single-hulled tankers, and then says the US and other countries will be phasing out double hulled tankers by 2015 or somesuch. Wouldn't they be phasing SINGLE hulled tankers out? And phasing double hulled tankers IN? Someone that knows the first thing about maritime shipping, please research at your leisure, or make this more clear, or something. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.204.72.207 (talk) 06:12, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  • The Nov 2003 article by Sean Flynn in Esquire magazine about this incident partially answered your question. The article stated that the USA did not allow single-walled ships of old age such as the Prestige to approach its coasts fully laden. Thus, ships like the Prestige were forced by various maritime laws to ship cargo at those places which still allowed ships of that age to enter their coastal waters. The article even specified that the ABS inspections of two of Glady's (Prestige's original name) sister ships showed that failure was imminent within 5 years at a certain hull plate region amidships. Coincidentally, Prestige failed at about that predicted time in the predicted region of hull plates. I guess the inspectors were right. For reasons not indicated in the article, Prestige's sister ships were scrapped after the damning inspection, but Prestige somehow escaped the scrapyard. Maybe there was an insurance angle for such a ship? The article indicates there was not even a buyer for the cheap cargo which might just be there to make the ship qualify as "in commercial use" for insurance purposes. It's an eye-opening article and worth reading. There is also a full-page satellite photo for additional perspective.AnimeJanai (talk) 05:15, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

• • I think before this already was a trend / requirement that all new build tankers are double hulled. Existing single hull vessels had a previous requirement for removal from service by a certain date, which was moved forward after this. This article STRONGLY lacks information on the tanker, more specifics on size (some vague ones present), vessel age- where build, it last previous overhaul and inspection and status/condition at that time. "Prestige's sister ships were scrapped after the damning inspection but Prestige somehow escaped the scrapyard" - could this be a matter of owners choices- at this age, the scrapped ships were owned by a different company. Wfoj2 (talk) 14:08, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Duplicate?

There are two lines referring to typefaces. They appear to be duplicates. -Ahruman 09:39, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• I have several comments on this page. First thing is that this page needs to have the same unit of measurement across the entire article. It constantly changes between tons to Cubed meters to gallons. Pick one. Besides, there are two types of Tons: the Short ton and the metric ton. The money currency should be the same, and should attempt to account or state the devaluation of the money. The article needs lots of work with spelling and organization.--Guille2015 06:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• A detailed article with illustrations and photos is in the November 2003 issue of Esquire magazine. It also describes the prior history of the ship, its major overhaul and repairs at a mainland China facility prior to the breakup, and the last six days of the ship's life. Information from interviews with the port master (flown out to the ship to supervise the last days of the ship) and others is also provided. Significantly, the interview with port master Diaz shows opinions that the ship was deliberately sabotaged (for insurance) once the the problems began to occur. That line of thought was backed up by a number of suspicious problems and situations during the last days of the Prestige's life.AnimeJanai (talk) 04:55, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

How many tons of oil, again?

"5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5 trillion) tons of fuel oil were spilled in the incident."
First off, that's not 5 trillion. Second, Earth's Mass: 6.58542823 * 10^21 short tons... "tons of fuel oil spilled": 5.0 * 10^21 short tons ( 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 )
So this spill leaked 75% of the Earth's mass in oil?
Even using the 5 trillion value, ( 5,000,000,000,000 ) is completely wrong.
http://www.environmenttimes.net/article.cfm?pageID=148 states "64,000 tonnes of oil" spilled. This is 15,000,000 gallons (15 million) -- 64.37.159.134 21:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism. .45Colt 22:36, 13 February 2014 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by .45Colt (talk • contribs)  

ABS case dismissed

Could someone verify this with court records? I cannot provide verification for this since I don't have access to them. Presumably the ABS press release page will include an update, but maybe not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dj245 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Captain.

I know this probably isn't the place, but they seriously blamed the CAPTAIN for this? What was he supposed to do? It wasn't his ship, he was just driving it. I'm no maritime expert, but it certainly sounds to me like it would have been better to allow the ship to dock in one of the three ports rather than sending it on its way, and in either case there is nothing the captain could have done differently to change anything. He didn't cause the rupture, and he couldn't fix it. So they made him stay out on the rough seas until the ship capsized and spilled ALL of its oil, and then arrested him, made him wait TEN YEARS (some of his last years, at age 78) wondering whether he was going to be found guilty or not, only to find him innocent after all that time? Seriously. So he didn't obey the authorities right away; that had no bearing on whether he was responsible for the accident. In fact, it sounds like he was resisting an order which he knew damn well would result in the ship sinking. And they charge him for both things. You can't win, can you? That and trying to press lawsuits against organizations like the ABS is ridiculous (as are most lawsuits these days). They don't have the budget, or in most cases the authority to go around and inspect every ship. They are pencil pushers; it would take a much bigger organization to keep track of every single tanker out there. Sometimes accidents happen, but if you have to charge anyone, charge and sue the people who owned and operated the ship, not the captain and some random bureau that didn't have much to do with the matter anyway. People don't like the oil industry (although they don't seem to mind driving much), so whenever something like this happens they just lask out and start suing the first obvious targets like they think it'll make a difference or make their point. It isn't as easy as they seem to think..45Colt 22:47, 13 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by .45Colt (talk • contribs)