Amoco Cadiz

1978

Portsall, steering failure, 227,000 tonnes Location: off Portsall, Finistère, Brittany, France · Coordinates: 48.60°N 4.83°W · Casualties: 0 · Survivors: all hands · Depth: 30 m (broken) · Cause: grounding · steering failure — Her rudder failed in a storm off Ushant on the morning of 16 March 1978. Negotiations with a West German tug over the salvage fee delayed effective assistance; in the interim she drifted onto Portsall Rocks and broke in half. 227,000 tonnes of Iranian crude and bunker fuel spilled. · Fate: broken up · scrapped · Type: VLCC oil tanker · Amoco · Tonnage: 109,700 GRT · Crew: 44 · Flag: Liberia · Amoco International · Launched: 1974 Liberian-flagged Very Large Crude Carrier, returning 220,000 tonnes of Iranian light from the Persian Gulf to Rotterdam. Her rudder failed off Ushant in a March gale on the morning of 16 March 1978; a West German tug refused to take her in tow without an agreed fee, and by the time negotiations ended the tide had driven her onto Portsall Rocks. She broke in half and spilled 227,000 tonnes of crude across 300 kilometres of Breton coast. The largest oil spill of its kind to that date; the subsequent French civil suit ran for 14 years and produced the most detailed environmental-damage judgement in European legal history. The Vessel The Amoco Cadiz was a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) of 233,690 deadweight tons, 334 metres long, built at the Astilleros Españoles yard at Cádiz, Spain, and delivered in May 1974 to the Amoco International Oil Company of Chicago. Her sister ships Amoco Singapore and Amoco Milford Haven operated the same Middle East-to-Europe route; the Amoco Cadiz was, at her commissioning, one of the largest commercial vessels afloat. She was registered under the Liberian flag, as the overwhelming majority of VLCCs of her era were; Liberian registration afforded the owner tax advantages and less onerous crewing requirements than American or European flag states. Her crew of 44 was predominantly Italian; her master, Captain Pasquale Bardari, was a 43-year-old career Italian merchant mariner whose career had included ten years of VLCC command in Greek and Cypriot flag vessels before his hire by Amoco in 1977. Her cargo on the voyage of 16 March 1978 was 121,157 tonnes of light Arabian and Iranian crude oil, loaded at Ras Tanura and Kharg Island between 30 January and 6 February 1978, destined for the Amoco refinery at Rotterdam via the English Channel. She had departed the Persian Gulf on 7 February 1978. She was, on the morning of 16 March 1978, approximately five hours from Ushant, the French cape that marks the northwest corner of the Brittany coast. The Disaster The grounding opened her forward cargo tanks on the first impact. The tide was falling; she settled onto the rocks as the tide ran out overnight, opening further tanks. By the morning of 17 March she had broken her back on the rocks; by 28 March she had broken in two; by 30 March she was three separate sections on the Portsall bar. The entire 223,000 tonnes of her crude oil cargo was released into the sea between 16 March and 30 March 1978. The spill was, at its release, the largest marine oil spill in history. Its contamination of the Brittany coast was worsened by the specific circumstances of the French tidal regime: the Portsall Rocks are on the edge of a very high-energy tidal stream area where the Atlantic tide ranges 8 metres or more, and the oil was distributed by tidal pumping across approximately 400 kilometres of Breton coast. 76 coastal communes were directly affected; the Breton oyster, scallop, and kelp industries collapsed in 1978 and had not recovered fully by 1985. The French government's response, coordinated by the Prefect of the Finistère department, was the largest oil-spill cleanup France had ever mounted. Approximately 6,000 French military personnel, 300 Royal Navy personnel seconded under NATO arrangements, and 20,000 civilian volunteers participated in the beach-cleaning operation over the following ten months. The cost of the French national response was approximately $75 million in 1978 dollars.