Pollution fund to pay Prestige oil spill victims
Victims of the Prestige oil tanker spill will receive initial compensation payments totalling 15% of their assessed losses, the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund has said.
The Prestige disgorged millions of gallons of oil when it broke up and sank in November, polluting Spanish and French coasts and shutting down fisheries.
The London-based compensation fund, which is financed largely by taxes on the oil industry, has agreed to pay no more than £130m (€181m) for clean-up and to compensate those affected by the spill.
The fund’s deputy director Joe Nichols said the total amount of claims could exceed the amount of money available for compensation.
For that reason the fund’s 1992 executive committee had decided to set the level of payments deliberately low – 15% of the total value of claimants’ losses
However, if the number and size of claims made were lower than initially feared, the payments could increase.
Most claims had so far come from French and Spanish fisheries and from the tourism sector, he said.
“We do not know the impact of this spill on tourism and fishing in France and Spain. If it turns out that the summer season is not as bad as it could be, as the expense goes down, we can progressively increase the payments,” Nichols added.
He noted that it had taken just over three years for compensation payments to reach 100% for people affected by the 1999 sinking of the Erika, a 25-year-old tanker that spilled 10,000 tons of oil which washed up on the beaches of France’s Atlantic coast.
According to the fund’s website, compensation is available to any individual, business, private organisation or public body that has suffered pollution damage as a result of the Prestige incident.
Compensation is payable under the 1992 Civil Liability Convention and the 1992 Fund Convention, which form part of Spanish, French and Portuguese law.
The Bahamas-flagged oil tanker was loaded with 20.5 million gallons of fuel oil for its voyage from the Baltic Sea to Singapore.
It ruptured in stormy weather on November 13, 150 miles off northern Spain, initially spilling about 800,000 gallons that contaminated fisheries, blackened beaches and killed wildlife along nearly 200 miles of the Iberian peninsula.
The vessel broke apart and sank, still spewing oil, after a three-day salvage operation that involved towing it away from the Spanish coast.
