Bracing For The Worst

A local government official warned coastal residents to brace for the worst this weekend as another massive oil slick from a sunken tanker drifted toward shore Friday.

The official also said the tanker Prestige, which was carrying about 20 million gallons when it sank, probably is still leaking petroleum from the bottom of the ocean.

Reconnaissance planes have spotted new slicks near the area in the Atlantic Ocean where the Prestige split in two and sank Nov. 19 after a six-day struggle at sea, Galicia's fisheries minister Enrique Lopez Veiga said in the regional capital Santiago de Compostela.

French and Portuguese planes also have detected signs of fresh oil at the site of the sinking, 150 miles offshore.

"It is probably still spilling fuel oil," the national news agency Efe quoted the official as saying.

The central government said anything bubbling up from the Prestige was likely the ship's own fuel or a lubricant, but it did not rule out that its cargo of fuel oil could be leaking.

Meanwhile, strong winds and currents off Spain's northwest coast were pushing a sprawling, amorphous petroleum mass toward Cape Finisterre, one of the areas already tarred by oil from the Prestige, Lopez Veiga said.

The slick - estimated to contain 2.4 million gallons of fuel oil - was about 19 miles offshore Friday afternoon, meaning it traveled about 18 miles since Thursday night and probably would come ashore this weekend, he said.

It was unclear how the oil will spread once it reaches the offshore continental shelf, where currents are unpredictable.

"We have everything against us," Lopez Veiga told Galician radio. "We must prepare for the worst."

Officials say this oil spilled when the ship broke apart and sank, and anti-pollution ships have suctioned off 613,000 gallons so far.

If the whole slick came ashore, it would be far more oil than that which has hit the craggy, economically vibrant coast of Galicia since the ship started leaking fuel when its hull cracked in a storm some two weeks ago.

The 26-year-old, single-hulled ship took most of its fuel-oil cargo with it when it sank, but it spilled some 1.6 million gallons - contaminating a region that suffered another big spill a decade ago.

The oil has blackened hundreds of miles of beach and rocky shore and forced a ban on fishing and seafood harvesting along a 300-mile stretch. Tens of thousands of fishermen and other sea-dependent workers are living off government handouts.

The oil that went down with the ship was expected to solidify at that depth of more than two miles and temperatures just above freezing. A small French research submarine was heading to the site to check for leaks.

Seven oil-sucking skimmer boats from other European Union countries traveled to the main slick Friday but waves up to 23 feet kept some of them from working, the Interior Ministry said.