Amoco Cadiz


Amoco Cadiz was a supertanker owned by Amoco Transport Corp and transporting crude oil for Shell Oil. Operating under the Liberian flag of convenience, she ran aground on 16 March 1978 on Portsall Rocks, from the coast of Brittany, France. Ultimately she split in three and sank, resulting in the largest oil spill of its kind in history to that date.

Oil spill

On 16 March 1978 in a southwesterly gale, the Amoco Cadiz passed Ushant at the western tip of Brittany, headed for Lyme Bay in the United Kingdom. At 9:46 am when the supertanker was north of Ushant and west of Portsall she turned to avoid another ship and her rudder jammed, full over to port. The captain shut down the engine and attempted to make repairs, but they were not successful. Meanwhile, the wind began blowing from the northwest, driving the ship toward the coast. By the time the tugboat Pacific successfully attached a hawser, it was 2:00 pm and the Amoco Cadiz had drifted closer to the shore. For two hours, the tugboat struggled to slow the vessel's drift, but then the towline parted. The captain of the Amoco Cadiz turned his engines on full astern and this helped slow the ship's drift. At 7:00 pm, the captain shut down the engines so that the Pacific could try to attach another hawser. The supertanker dropped one anchor, but the flukes broke off. At this point the supertanker was drifting at toward the Portsall Rocks. A new towline was successfully attached at 8:55 pm but the Amoco Cadiz hit a rock soon afterward and began to leak. At 9:30 pm near the Corn-Carhai lighthouse, a rock ripped a hole in the ship and flooded the engine room.
Amoco Cadiz contained 1,604,500 barrels of light crude oil from Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia and Kharg Island, Iran. Severe weather resulted in the complete breakup of the ship before any oil could be pumped out of the wreck, resulting in her entire cargo of crude oil and 4,000 tons of fuel oil being spilled into the sea. The US NOAA estimates that the total oil spill amounted to 220,880 metric tonnes of oil.

Aftermath

On 29 March 1978, the French Navy dropped depth charges to dismantle parts of the vessel.
In 1988 a U.S. federal judge ordered Amoco Oil Corporation to pay $85.2 million in fines; $45 million for the costs of the spill and $39 million in interest. In 1992, Amoco agreed to pay $230 million.
The site is visited by leisure divers.