Oil slick expected to wash ashore soon off Spain's coast

MADRID, Spain -- People in Cape Finisterre trudged to the lighthouse Saturday and looked through binoculars at the shiny , 200-mile-square slick of fuel oil drifting unstoppably toward Spain's northwest coast.

The oil slick moved to within about three miles of the coast by Saturday morning. Officials expected it to wash up against shore soon. There wasn't much hope of blocking the slick, which is simply too big.

Under cloudy skies Saturday, specially equipped boats skimmed more oil from the Atlantic Ocean, while maritime officials and fishermen deployed more floating barriers between the oil and the shore.

The slick of 2.4 million gallons of toxic fuel oil is the biggest of several leaks from the tanker Prestige that ruptured in a storm Nov. 13 and finally broke in half and sank six days later about 150 miles off the cape. It was carrying about 20 million gallons, and about 4 million gallons seeped out.

"We have everything against us," Galicia's fisheries minister Enrique Lopez Veiga told radio Friday. "We must prepare for the worst."

The Galician coast is one of Europe's busiest fishing regions, and has been mopping up its beaches and rocky coastline for the past two weeks from the first oil slick from the Prestige.

Boats working the slick have skimmed 613,000 gallons of the oil from the sea so far.

The government has banned fishing along the a 300-mile stretch of coast and tens of thousands of fishermen and sea-dependent workers have been laid off.

The government claims that there is little threat from the 16 million gallons of oil still inside the Prestige because the contents solidified in the chilling cold and high pressure of the deep sea. Oil continues to appear above the wreck, but Spain has said that is the ship's own fuel and lubricant.

France and Portugal said their reconnaissance planes have also detected signs of fresh oil at the site. A small French research submarine was to arrive today to check the boat for leakage.