Assessment of economic damages from the Prestige oil spill

Abstract

The Prestige oil spill may be considered as one of the worst in last years, because of the amount spilled (59,000 tons at the moment) and the wide zone affected: almost all the coastline in Galicia (Spanish region with a very important coastal fishing activity) and some points in the North Spain and in the Southwest France. In this paper, we estimate the short-term economic damages from the Prestige oil spills in the Galician coastal fishing and aquaculture sectors by great areas. The zones that received more oil spills obtained the biggest economic losses.