Pollution at Sea
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MARITIME POLLUTION AND STATE LIABILITY
MARITIME POLLUTION AND STATE LIABILITY
Simon Baughen1INTRODUCTION
This chapter begins with a tale of two maritime casualties. The first involves the oil tanker Prestige. On 13 November 2002, this 26-year-old single-hull tank ship suffered an accident in a violent storm 45 miles off the Spanish coast. The vessel came to within 5 miles of the Spanish coast, but the Spanish government refused it entry to a place of refuge. Instead, the vessel was sent out to sea in a north-western direction and ultimately sank on 19 November some 150 miles off the coast. The result was a massive oil spill affecting the entire Spanish northern Atlantic coast, as well as some of the Portuguese and French coastlines. It is likely that had the vessel been admitted to a place of refuge in Spanish internal waters, the vessel could have been saved, and any spill from salvage operations would have been considerably less in quantity and more limited in geographical scope. Clearly political pressures - a case of “no en mi patio trasero”2 - influenced the decision of the Spanish government to refuse access to a place of refuge in its waters.