Prestige oil spill participant MV Prestige
The Prestige oil spill occurred off the coast of Galicia, Spain in November 2002, caused by the sinking of the 26-year-old, structurally deficient oil tanker MV Prestige, carrying 77,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. During a storm, it burst a tank on 13 November, and French, Spanish, and Portuguese governments refused to allow the ship to dock. The vessel subsequently sank on 19 November, about 210 kilometres (130 mi) from the coast of Galicia. It is estimated that it spilled 60,000 tonnes or a volume of 67,000 m3 (17.8 million US gal) of heavy fuel oil.The oil spill polluted 2300 kilometers (1429 miles) of coastline and more than one thousand beaches on the Spanish, French and Portuguese coast, as well as causing great harm to the local fishing industry. The spill is the largest environmental disaster in the history of both Spain and Portugal. The amount of oil spilled was more than the Exxon Valdez incident and the toxicity was considered higher, because of the higher water temperatures.
In 2007 the Southern District of New York dismissed a 2003 lawsuit by the Kingdom of Spain against the American Bureau of Shipping, the international classification society which had certified the Prestige as in compliance with rules and laws, because ABS was a "person" per the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage and exempt from direct liability for pollution damage. The 2012 trial of the Galicia regional High Court did not find the merchant shipping company, nor the insurer, the London P&I Club nor any Spanish government official, but only the Captain of the ship guilty and gave him a nine-month suspended sentence for disobedience. In January 2016 the Spanish Supreme Court held the London P&I Club liable for damages up to the amount of its overall cover for the shipowner for pollution of $1 billion. The Spanish judgment is unlikely to be enforceable due to a UK judgment requiring any claims to be determined via arbitration under UK law. The overall damages awarded by the court in A Coruña in 2017 was just over €1.5bn, a figure confirmed by the Spanish Supreme Court in December 2018.