Bay of Gibraltar is 'disaster waiting to happen'

Sandrine Morel in the Guardian (UK): The rock of Gibraltar rises to the east, its massive limestone cliffs more than 400 metres above sea level. To the west lies the Spanish port of Algeciras and its nature reserve. Between the two is a gulf barely 7km across where about 30 tankers and liners compete for space.

They are moored in the bay waiting. Gibraltar is Europe's top port for refuelling. Located on one side of the strait connecting the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, with more than 110,000 ships passing through every year, it is a very attractive spot, especially since it levies no tax on fuel. Ships filling their tanks here can even dispense with mooring fees. But according to environmental campaigners the outlook is far from idyllic: the Bay of Gibraltar is a disaster waiting to happen.

A few hundred metres off the coast of the British overseas territory, a huge oil tanker, the Jacques Jacob, is pumping thousands of litres of diesel fuel into a pipe, which reaches down its hull, over the water and into the tank of a refuelling freighter. The two vessels, moored in the open sea, are only separated by a buoy that acts as a buffer. But at the slightest mishap, a spill is highly likely.

Day after day, dozens of cargo ships repeat the tricky process of "bunkering"'. On the Spanish side freighters refuel in dock, but Gibraltar does not have enough space for fuel tanks. So at any given time there are three floating filling stations cluttering up the bay. Authorised by the UK authorities, they are forbidden in Spain. "The risk is too great," says Alfonso Marquina, the harbour master at Algeciras-La Linea. Each of the tankers carries up to 100,000 litres of diesel.

...The Algeciras harbour master has registered four spills since the beginning of the year. In January, the fuel tank on a ship that was filling up overflowed, releasing five cubic metres of diesel. In June, 300 litres of coolant leaked into the sea, and of course there are countless spills involving just a few litres...

Gibraltar seen from La Linea, shot by Hans Lohninger, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license