The 600-page report produced by 40 academics for the Barrie de la Maza private economic institute said the Prestige affair was a "clear warning and an example of how not to do certain things".

Since the Prestige broke up and sank off Spain's northwestern Galician coast in November, 78,000 tonnes of fuel residue have been scraped off beaches, according to El Pais newspaper, while the wreck continues to spew out up to one tonne per day off an area renowned for its outstanding natural beauty.

The academic report put the cost of cleaning up the Galician coastline alone at 2.47 billion euros (2.8 billion dollars), compared with about two billion dollars for Exxon Valdez -- although damage has spread across the northern Spanish coast to France.

"It is very probable that the damage exceeds that arising as a consequence of the Exxon Valdez accident regarding the extent of the contamination and the importance of the (effect on) fishing activities," said

The Exxon Valdez supertanker ran into a reef off the coast of Alaska in 1989, spilling almost 11 million gallons of oil and causing one of the worst ever environmental disasters as a slick spread along some 800 kilometresmiles) of coastline.

A US court ordered Exxon Mobil to pay four billion dollars in punitive damages for the disaster, but the case is mired in legal challenges.

Ecologists say the slick from the Prestige directly put 16,000 people out of work and indirectly cost another 80,000 their jobs, wreaking havoc with the regional economy.

The Prestige study's authors criticised the Spanish government who had "baselessly" alleged that heavy fuel still in the wreck would solidify over time owing to underwater pressure and low temperatures.

They also blasted the government's chosen course of towing the wreck out to sea rather than to a port as recommended by several scientists, whose suggestion "was rejected, among other reasons, for the social and political cost of the massive contamination" it could have caused in the near vicinity.

Instead, the pollution spread much further, the report's authors concluded.

"We have the impression that our society and politicians still do not consider conservation and respect for nature as a real priority," they said.

The study also focused on the impact the Prestige sinking had on fauna, adding that the deaths of 250,000 birds caught up in the slick was a "plausible scenario (which) if confirmed would be the most serious ever recorded in Europe and in similar proportion to the Exxon Valdez."

A particular problem in the Prestige case, the report said, is the fact that "the fuel spilled by the Prestige is one of the petroleum products most resistant to microbiological degradation."

Using micro-organisms to degrade the heavy fuel could pose a risk to fishing in Galicia, a key industry in the western Spanish region.

The government over the past three months allowed fishing to resume in much of Galicia and other regions in northern Spain which all depend largely on fishing and related industries.

Last month, environmental watchdog Greenpeace said 1,137 beaches remained polluted with oil from the spillage along 2,000 kilometres of Spain's shoreline.

TERRA.WIRE