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The Spanish government has confirmed that marine fuel is continuing to leak from the sunken fishing vessel Oleg Naydenov.

Ana Pastor [pictured], the Minister of Public Works and Transport, spoke this afternoon in a press conference alongside Javier González Ortiz, the Canary Islands Minister of Economic Affairs, Finance and Security, where she provided an update regarding the work that is being carried out to evaluate the scale of the environmental impact of the incident.

Pastor explained that the spilled fuel is moving in a south-westerly direction, and that an underwater vessel is to be used to examine the state of the Russian trawler in order to decide whether it will be possible to extract the marine fuel still on board.

The 1990-built 136-metre-long Oleg Naydenov caught fire inside the Port of Las Palmas on Saturday and was later towed to a location around 15 nautical miles south of Gran Canaria, where it sank on Tuesday night to a depth of around 2,400 metres.

According to the Maritime Security and Rescue Society (Salvamento Marítimo), the Russian vessel is carrying 1,409 tonnes of intermediate fuel oil (IFO), 30 tonnes of marine gas oil (MGO) and 65 tonnes of lubricant.

Pastor confirmed that the alert level had been increased from 'level 0' to 'level 1', with 'level 4' being the maximum alert rating.

Pastor also stated that the best way to access the Russian trawler was being studied because the objective of the authorities was to extract the remaining fuel inside the vessel's bunker tanks.

The Public Works and Transport Minister did not specify whether the oil slick had increased in size, but did say that "the biggest concentration of fuel is 40 miles southeast" of the location where the trawler sank.

She also said that the slick was located outside Spanish territory and three miles from the most environmentally sensitive area.

The slick itself is said to be six kilometres long and two kilometres wide.

"The important thing to do now is to provide as much data as possible to the Maritime Security and Rescue Society team who are operating in the area," commented Pastor.

She added that it was necessary to "act as quickly as possible to minimize the environmental risk in the area".