TR: "Dirty and liars"
Repsol spill in Peru. Cartoon of 30/01/2022 in CTXT
On the night of 15 January 2022, an oil spill from the Italian-flagged oil tanker, owned by Repsol, caused an oil spill in Peru Mare Doricumowned by Repsol, caused one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in the history of Peru
A real ecological attack. The spill reached beaches and protected areas, also affecting marine fauna in at least 18,000 square metres in the province of Callao.
The government declared an environmental emergency for 90 days in the affected coastal area and described the event as "the worst ecological disaster in Peru's recent history".
Repsol claimed the accident had been caused by strong waves following the eruption of the underwater volcano in Tonga. Although witnesses who were in nearby vessels the captain of the oil tanker has denied this theory and the now accuses Repsol of failures during the spill.
Repsol reacted by lying. First, in a communiqué in which they claimed that they had "managed to contain the incident", and that only 7 gallons of oil had been spilled, but the clean-up work and the images of the work itself showed something very different. A second estimate by Repsol said that 6,000 barrels had spilled.
Repsol finally admitted that the amount of oil spilled into the Peruvian sea during the offloading of the tanker Mare Doricum at the La Pampilla refinery was 10,396 barrels of crude oil (1.65 million litres).
This amount, although slightly less than the 11,900 barrels (1.9 million litres) estimated by the Peruvian Ministry of Environment, was well above the 6,000 barrels that the company had estimated and communicated to the authorities just a few days earlier.
TR: "There are no laws of historical memory for the company massacres".
A cartoon from 2008 for a exhibition on the tenth anniversary of the 1998 Aznalcóllar disaster.
On 24 January, a mission of experts a United Nations Environmental Disaster Response Team arrived in the area to assess the disaster and propose measures to mitigate it.
On 25 January, the resignations at Repsol and on the 26th, the Peruvian authorities confirmed a new oil spill off the coast of Lima, in the same area where the first one occurred
The Peruvian justice system has banned four Repsol executives, including the executive director in Peru, Jaime Fernández-Cuesta Luca de Tena, from leaving the country for 18 months for their alleged responsibility in the oil spill and is proposing sanctions of millions of dollars and the cessation of operations in the country
They consider that the company, now under investigation for environmental pollution, deserves, at the very least, a fine for not reporting the event initially.
