The Prestige Wreck Fuel Recovery Project

Abstract

This article is an overview of the recovery project to extract the hydrocarbons remaining in the wreck of the Prestige tanker. The ship, carrying approximately 77 000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, broke up and sank in 3850-m-deep water in November 2002, 240 km off the north-western coast of Spain. During the sinking, and for a period of several months afterward, a large amount of fuel was spilled, ending up mainly on the shores of Galicia. Repsol YPF, though in no way connected to the vessel or its cargo, was appointed by the Spanish government to recover the fuel remaining inside the wreck. Extraction of the remaining fuel was carried out in 2004 by use of large-volume aluminum shuttles. An innovative core-flow technique was used to extract this extremely viscous fuel (500 kPa.s at the shuttle offloading conditions) from the shuttles and offload it into a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel. Finally, bioremediation was used to accelerate the biodegradation of the remaining immobile fuel.