Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

In Nov. 2002, a Greek-owned oil tanker called the Prestige broke apart 130 miles off of Spain’s northern coast after encountering a storm and sank to the bottom of the freezing Atlantic.

The wreck poured 20 million gallons of oil into the sea — almost twice what spilled out of the infamous Exxon Valdez in Alaska. The result was an environmental and economic disaster, with the toxic impact stretching along 350 miles of coastline, killing millions of fish and birds, and prompting the Spanish government to ban fishing, a vital source of income for many, for six months along most areas of the country’s Galician coast.

But in the U.S., headlines about the Prestige disaster were overshadowed by the post-9/11 buildup to the Iraq War. Against that backdrop, the 2004 documentary Spain: The Lawless Sea brought the oil spill, its impact, and questions about whether the aging Prestige should have been allowed at sea in the first place into focus for a U.S. audience.

“We need an international tribunal to judge everyone, from the oil merchants … to the ship owners, to the government,” Rafael Mouzo, a fisherman and the mayor of a coastal village hard hit by the oil, said in the documentary.

From reporter Mark Schapiro and producer Oriana Zill de Granados, Spain: The Lawless Sea originally aired as part of FRONTLINE/World, a special FRONTLINE series that ran from 2002-2010 and was developed in partnership with GBH in Boston and KQED in San Francisco. The documentary, which was produced in association with the Center for Investigative Reporting, is now available to stream on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel for the first time as part of an effort to make the series’ archive of reporting widely accessible. 

In the documentary, Schapiro pieced together the Prestige’s path in the days prior to the disaster — from the damage it sustained in a storm other ships navigated without issue, to how Spanish authorities then directed the wounded tanker out to deep water. The captain, Apostolos Mangouras, initially refused, saying the ship should be brought to port where the leaking oil might be confined. Two days into the journey out to the deep sea, the Prestige broke in two — and Spain’s government was unprepared for the “black tide” that followed.

“It is covering everything,” a Galician man said of the oil. “We’ve been here all night with the boat covered in fuel. There is nothing, no equipment, no help. They’ve promised nothing. We have to do it all ourselves.”

As the search for accountability unfolded, Schapiro’s investigation shed light on a largely unregulated maritime system that offered few safeguards against environmental disasters. He reported on alleged warnings about the ship’s condition to its owners before it set out from St. Petersburg, Russia, on what would be its final voyage. The owners had registered the ship not in their home country of Greece, but through a front company in war-ravaged Liberia, Schapiro reported, making their connection to the tanker difficult to trace.

In addition, Schapiro explored evidence that a warning about the Prestige’s unsound condition was faxed to the American Bureau of Shipping, or ABS, the company responsible for inspecting the ship and certifying it as seaworthy. ABS said it never received the fax, and Spain’s lawsuit against ABS over the spill was dismissed in 2010 in a U.S. federal court.

Other litigation over the Prestige disaster has continued for more than two decades after the spill.

Mangouras was the only person ultimately convicted in criminal court. His two-year prison sentence was later permanently suspended. He has maintained his innocence.

In 2004, Spain recovered more than 13,000 tons of oil from the wreck of the Prestige. Some oil remains, but the wreck is no longer considered a significant pollution threat.

Cleanup costs would ultimately top $2.5 billion, more than for the Exxon Valdez.

Watch the Full Documentary | Spain: The Lawless Sea 

 

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