France faces oil slick disaster

The first oil began to come ashore a week ago

France is braced for an environmental crisis as oil slicks from the sunken tanker, Prestige, drift towards its southern coast, driven by high winds.

Some reports say enough oil to cover New York City could hit the coast in the coming weeks.

The first small oil patches have already been washed ashore, triggering a major clean-up operation involving police, firefighters and troops.

"We know that there is a concentration of oil slicks from... Bordeaux to Santander in Spain," Ecology Minister Roselyne Bachelot told the Le Parisien newspaper.

Windy forecast

"If the weather continues as we expect, then these slicks could wash up in the estuary of the Gironde around 5 January," she added.

Thousands of troops are cleaning up in Spain

The Prestige began leaking on 13 November and sank after breaking in two six days later.

Part of its cargo of 77,000 tons of fuel oil contaminated Spain's richest fishing grounds and spilt onto the north-west Galician coastline.

The clean-up there is already estimated to have cost Spain $250m.

Weather forecasts indicate strong westerly winds will continue to drive the oil towards the French coast in the coming days.

Fragmented slicks

The clean-up is taking place in the Landes area, north of Biarritz, where the first pellets of oil from the Prestige were found on 24 December.

One of the tanker's holes has been sealed

The long sandy beaches of the region flanked by vast pine forests are popular with surfers and holidaymakers.

It is thought that the fragmented slicks, from several metres square to several tens of metres square, could continue to hit the coast for months to come.

A French mini-submarine has plugged some of the cracks in the hull of the Prestige, now lying 3.5km beneath the sea about 130 nautical miles west of Spain.

However, the cargo has continued to leak slowly.

Bad weather has prevented the submarine from working since 22 December.

Anti-pollution ships and aerial reconnaissance planes tracking the slicks are also out of action, because of high winds.

For France, the latest oil leak revives painful memories of the oil spilt in 1999 by the tanker Erika on the Brittany coast, causing some $860 million of damage.