Gibraltar says there will be "inevitable" oil spills from the semi-sunken vessel for the rest of the summer

Efforts are being made to contain and collect the fuel oil slick caused by 'OS35' with barriers and anti-pollution equipment. (Government of Gibraltar/EFE)

Gibraltar rescue teams have already managed to extract almost half of the fuel oil found inside the semi-sunken bulk carrier on the eastern side of the Rock since last Monday night.

After managing to extract some 250 tons of diesel between Thursday and Friday, the company designated for the tasks, Resolve Marine Services, is working to speed up the emptying of the first of the tanks loaded with low-sulfur fuel — a denser fuel for boats and polluting than the first—, to then focus on the second in which the

it stored a total of 215 tons of fuel for self-consumption.

However, homework complications are slowing down the process.

Meanwhile, the Government of Gibraltar has recognized that there will be "inevitable" spills during the rest of the summer, until the merchant ship is recovered.

The ship, loaded with steel bars, remains partially sunken in the Catalan Bay area, 700 meters from the Gibraltarian coast and 2.2 kilometers from the Levante beach in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz).

From that point, she began to pour fuel oil during the day on Thursday, after the ship's hull buckled the previous day, stranded in a controlled manner on a sandbank at a depth of 17 meters.

Since then, the teams led by the Gibraltar Port Authority and with the support of the Spanish Maritime Rescue have worked hard to try to contain and collect a slick of indeterminate extent that is drifting in the vicinity of the Strait.

To do this, they are using different types of barriers deployed in the sea and anti-pollution equipment —such as

— embarked on ships such as the Spanish

or

.

The operations of "skimming" or disposal of discharges are continuous, "but they have limits", as the Government of Gibraltar assured in a statement this Saturday.

Within the existing barrier near the ship it is finding more success than in the open sea, where the veil of fuel is light: "It needs to be corralled into denser patches in order to be picked up."

To complete this task, Gibraltar is going to add a catamaran boat from Cádiz that will operate 24 hours a day to skim any oil, including that from smaller layers.

All the works in the sea have not been able to avoid that part of the discharge has reached different points of the coast of the Rock and the Levante de La Línea beach, located on the opposite side of the Rock.

“Continued leaching of small amounts of contaminating material from

during the period it remains

will be almost unavoidable ,” the Government of Gibraltar has stated.

The same sources have added: “The deployment of layers of barriers around the ship will prevent the maximum amount of seepage into open water, but will not provide a hermetic containment layer, which is not technologically possible to provide (…).

Therefore, this situation will continue for the rest of the summer and until the salvage operation is completed.”

Since the City Council of La Línea detected the first stains at noon on Friday, the Junta de Andalucía raised the red flag on that beach to prevent damage.

The Andalusian Administration picked up a spot of between 75 and 50 meters in the area.

For now, no new discharges have been detected on the same beach or others in the area.

However, from the Spanish Merchant Marine Directorate, dependent on the Ministry of Transport, they recognize that the situation is changing and is subject to sea currents and tides.

More affected points have been detected in Gibraltar, which has already reported spots in Sandy Bay, in addition to those recorded in Rosia Bay —on opposite sides of the Rock— by local media.

La Roca has shielded various points of the coast with anti-pollution barriers, with special interest in Little Bay, an area where the desalination plants that supply running water to the city have their intakes.

There, the divers have even checked that the mouths have not been affected by the arrival of oil.

During the day yesterday, the Gibraltarian Government reported that it had located a small group of birds affected by the fuel.

In addition to the workers who are already on the job, the Rock is organizing an oil collection along the coast for tomorrow, Sunday, in collaboration with associations and various NGOs.

The company Resolve Marine Services —designated by the shipowner's insurance company— is now working to extract the more than 100 tons of light fuel oil that accumulates in the two tanks that contain it.

First thing in the morning, the Government assured that the idea was to end the extraction of fuel this Saturday.

However, in the afternoon he explained that the tasks have been slowed down by an ingress of water in the ship's engine room that has forced the ship to seek independent energy to power the pumps.

In addition, before the “complex” tasks of recovering the fuel from tank 1 —damaged by the accident— began, they are busy laying out a new barrier one kilometer long to minimize the escape of leaks.

The work is conditioned both by the complexity of handling this type of discharge,

The

It suffered an apparently accidental collision on its way out of the port of Gibraltar against a methane tanker that was anchored, during the late night of last Monday.

The impact caused the first a gap in the central area of ​​the hull 10 meters long by four meters wide.

Despite this, the ship's captain attempted to continue on his planned course to a port in the Netherlands and ignored the orders of the Rock's sea captain, who told him to stop the merchant ship.

When the water leak became evident, the Gibraltarian authority ordered the bulk carrier to go to Catalan Bay to carry out a controlled stranding at a depth of 17 metres.

The decision, although criticized by environmentalists, has been endorsed by independent experts and by different Spanish authorities,

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