Tanker Towed as Experts Try to Stem Morocco Oil Spill

Cleanup experts Monday tried to patch a crippled Iranian supertanker and protect a sensitive coastline from 37 million gallons of spilled crude oil that has formed a huge slick over the Atlantic Ocean.

A tug secured a line to the half-sunken Kharg 5 and began towing the 1,837-foot vessel out to sea, 13 days after an explosion ripped its hull about 400 miles north of Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands.

Moroccan technicians struggled to repair a gash in the hull that continued streaming crude oil.

The oil slick--reported to be 175 miles long--moved to within 12 miles of the Moroccan coast, and some of the oil could wash ashore as early as Wednesday, said Jean-Francois Levy, secretary general of France’s Interministerial Mission on the Sea.

The spill was reported to be more than three times that of the 11 million gallons of crude oil dumped into Alaska’s Prince William Sound by the Exxon Valdez last year, but the warmer water off Morocco could help disperse it.

Military aircraft monitored the spill’s movement Monday, the official Moroccan news agency Maghreb Arab Press reported.

Experts placed a barrier at the leading edge of the slick to prevent it from reaching a 106-mile stretch of coastline that is home to both wildlife and a thriving tourist industry.

The slick was reported moving toward the coast at about 650 feet per hour.

The cause of the tanker’s Dec. 19 explosion was not known. A subsequent fire forced the 35 crew members to abandon ship, and the vessel and her leaking cargo began drifting toward northwest Africa.

Robert Luigi, an oil-spill expert for the Marseilles Port Authority, said that Moroccan officials are coping well with the spill and that the danger to coastal areas is slight. Morocco is a former French colony.

“In the case of wind blowing from the sea toward land, there could be some traces of hydrocarbons on the coast in the next four or five days,” Luigi said.

But, he added, much of the oil has evaporated or disintegrated into small particles due to the warm seas.

Meanwhile, Morocco’s Interior Ministry reported no reply Monday to a weekend appeal to Britain, Spain and Portugal for new assistance in the looming “environmental catastrophe,” the Moroccan news agency said.

However, the Spanish ship Pointa Salenas left for the area Sunday with 6,600 gallons of dispersal agents to help break up the oil.

Potential damage to fishing stocks, tourism and other coastal industries could cost 100,000 jobs, according to the Moroccan Interior Ministry.