A group of Mexican citizens are preparing the first civil lawsuit in the Mexican courts against British oil company BP for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The plaintiffs are bringing the class action lawsuit under a 2011 reform of the Mexican constitution that allows a large number of people with a common interest in a matter to sue as a group.

The civil lawsuit encompasses “damages to people living in the area or who own residential and commercial property along the coast, and people indirectly affected” by the spill, lawyer Óscar Preciado, with the law firm Rincón Mayorga Román Illanes Soto y Compañía, told IPS.

Sea turtles are among the larger animal species whose reproduction was hurt by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

“Without a doubt, this will set an important precedent. Class action lawsuits have been brought, but in questions relating to consumer, rather than environmental, rights,” said the lawyer, whose firm is representing the plaintiffs.

On Apr. 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, owned by Swiss-based Transocean Ltd and under lease to BP, exploded off the coast of Louisiana, leaving 11 workers dead and 17 injured. It sank two days later.

By Jul. 15, 2010, when the oil leak was finally sealed, nearly five million barrels of oil had been spilled – only 800,000 of which were recovered – and at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants had been injected into the Gulf of Mexico.

The spill poses a long-term threat to flora, fauna and fishing resources in the Gulf of Mexico, which bathes the coasts of the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Quintana Roo, and to tourist sites, although the final extent of the damage is unknown, experts say.

“The government and BP can be sued in Mexico. The government was guilty of omission in this case,” René Sánchez, the coordinator of Colectivas, told IPS. The non-governmental organisation was born in November 2012 to provide advice to organisations and individuals with respect to filing class action lawsuits.

However, the 2011 law on collective action, which allows groups of consumers and PROFECO, Mexico’s federal consumer protection agency, to sue public and private companies, does not contemplate reparations.

The Gulf of Mexico disaster gave rise to a massive class action lawsuit involving more than 130,000 plaintiffs, known as multi-district litigation 2179 (MDL-2179), overseen by federal Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans.

In January, BP pleaded guilty to 14 criminal counts and was sentenced to pay 4.5 billion dollars in penalties and fines. However, the amount is expected to climb as the lawsuit continues to wind its way through the courts.

The following month, TransOcean was found guilty by a U.S. federal judge of violating the U.S. Clean Water Act, and was fined 1.4 billion dollars.

Barbier set a Jun. 21 deadline for the attorneys to file their conclusions about evidence presented in the first phase of the trial.

In April, the government of conservative Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto sued BP and other companies in a U.S. court, after his predecessor Felipe Calderón (2006-December 2012) failed to do so.

The government’s lawsuit will fall under MDL-2179.

In 2010, the state governments of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Quintana Roo, as well as several companies, had brought legal action against BP and TransOcean for damages to the marine environment, the coastline, and local estuaries.

Government agencies in Mexico spent more than 11 million dollars on studies, assessments, lab tests, training and overflights related to the disaster, the state governments argued.

BP Mexico did not respond to IPS’ queries about the government or class action lawsuits.

The dearth of studies on the magnitude of the damages in the Gulf of Mexico has been the Achilles’ heel of the environmental organisations and lawyers involved in preparing the class action lawsuit in Mexico.

“That is the question that has limited us the most,” Preciado said. “The Mexican state has not been very participative.

“The damages will appear over the course of years, and this won’t be easily resolved. But we are not frightened of taking on BP – on the contrary, we are very motivated,” added the lawyer, who is working on another class action lawsuit against Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) involving oil spills in the southeast state of Tabasco.

The class action suit will pose a challenge to the Mexican judges, who are not accustomed to environmental litigation, when it is presented to a federal court in the capital on a date that has not yet been established.

Colectivas’ Sánchez said “we have to see how the judges prepare, and the state of the judiciary’s bureaucracy. One of the first steps is for the plaintiffs to be recognised as a class,” as occurs under the U.S. justice system.

Sánchez is also preparing a collective lawsuit against the eventual approval of commercial planting of genetically modified maize in Mexico.

Despite the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster and a September 2008 blow-out on a BP rig in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan – which was covered up – Pemex signed a technological agreement with the British company in 2012 for deep-sea operations in this country’s Gulf of Mexico waters.

“It is an aberration,” Preciado remarked.

Rising temperatures mean the vast Arctic Ocean, which used to be frozen over for much of the year, is now an open shipping line for more than half the year. Credit: public domain

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Feb 6 2013 (IPS)

Environmentalists are warning that a meeting of environment ministers that took place Monday in Sweden has agreed on a weak and inadequate response plan in case of an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean.

According to Greenpeace, an environment watchdog, a leaked copy of the document suggests that the eight member states that make up a group dubbed the Arctic Council have failed to agree on the technical details necessary for dealing with a large-scale disaster, even while it opens the way for increased drilling and oil exploration in the Arctic.

“We are unimpressed by what we’ve seen from this totally inadequate document,” Ben Ayliffe, a Greenpeace campaigner based in Washington, told IPS. “It does nothing to prepare governments for dealing with disasters or for protecting the Arctic from disasters.”

According to the United Nations’ global climate office, Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level on record in 2012. That process, which overwhelming scientific data attributes to human-induced climate change, has created a virtual gold rush to the Arctic.

Rising temperatures mean the vast Arctic Ocean, which used to be frozen over for much of the year, is now an open shipping lane for more than half the year, on average. This has resulted in a scramble to lay claim to Arctic territory, which is estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to contain 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered energy resources.

However, environmentalists are concerned that no mechanisms are in place to prevent or respond to an environmental disaster.

According to Richard Steiner, a biologist and expert on oil spills based in Alaska, this past summer, a record 46 merchant ships transited through what is known as the Northern Sea Route, a 10-fold increase from just two years ago. “There has been an extraordinary increase in shipping across the Arctic Ocean, mainly with very hazardous petroleum products on board,” Steiner told IPS.

He also warns that an increase in offshore oil and gas drilling potential in the Arctic demands robust laws. Yet, he says, the Arctic Council agreement has no technical performance standards, enforcement mechanisms or operational guidelines.

“They are charging forward with this Arctic offshore oil drilling development and shipping without the proper safeguards in place, and it’s really tragic,” Steiner said. “I’m afraid they are going to wait for a big spill disaster before putting the right systems in place.”

He added that this is what happened with the Exxon Valdez case, when an oil tanker ran aground in Alaska in 1989.

“I’m afraid this is what’s going to happen in the Arctic, too,” he continues. “Despite the lessons learned … very little has changed as far as prevention policy is concerned.”

No proven capacity

The Arctic Council, established in 1996, is made up of states with territory in the Arctic, and comprises Canada, Denmark (including Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. The new oil spill treaty will be formally voted upon by members in May, and would become the second binding agreement reached by the Arctic Council since a search-and-rescue agreement was signed in 2011.

Yet Ayliffe says the document doesn’t adequately deal with the complex issues involved with a potential spill.

“It’s a nightmare scenario,” Ayliffe says. “The technical difficulties of responding to a disaster a mile beneath the ice make the kind of operation that BP had to do in the Gulf impossible in the Arctic.”

Despite earlier assurances by the Arctic Council that any agreement would include specific environmental protections, including oil spill recovery and prevention strategies, Ayliffe says the agreement “fails to outline any essential response equipment, methods for capping wells, or cleaning up oil-affected habitat and wildlife, relying instead on vague statements of steps Arctic nations should take within available resources.”

The document contains ambiguous language regarding oil spills, only asking countries to take “appropriate steps” to deal with a spill, without specifying clear demands or requirements. It also lacks guidelines relating to the liability of oil companies in case of a disaster or guidelines on how to adequately deal with a spill.

“No oil company has ever proven it can respond to an oil spill in ice, and the agreement offers nothing in regard to how a company would stop or clean up a Deepwater Horizon-style disaster,” Ayliffe said, referring to the massive 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, when nearly five million barrels of oil spewed from a blown oil well in the sea floor for nearly three months.

“We are hoping that, because of the outrage that has been caused by this document, before the May vote there will be time to fill some of the holes.”

An oil spill has threatened the coral reefs and marine ecosystems in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Jan 7 2013 (IPS)

Coral reefs and marine ecosystems in the Milne Bay Province of the Pacific Island nation of Papua New Guinea are at serious risk of long-term environmental damage. The reason: an oil spill from a ship that ran aground on a reef on Kwaiawata Island on Christmas Eve, and authorities’ long delay in mobilising an appropriate response to the accident.

“The area has some of the fastest currents in the world and this delay has increased the likelihood of the oil spreading quickly beyond the vessel,” Chalapan Kaluwin, professor of environmental science at the University of Papua New Guinea, told IPS.

“It is too early to assess the full scale of the damage, but there are fragile marine and island ecosystems in this area and the impacts on reefs, marine life and the marine resources that island communities depend on is likely to be long term, rather than short term.”

The MV Asian Lily aground on a reef on the remote Kwaiawata Island in Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. Photo Credit: National Maritime Safety Authority.

The Japanese-owned 136-metre reefer vessel MV Asian Lily, which wasn’t carrying any refrigerated cargo at the time, was negotiating Milne Bay – a province comprising 160 islands to the southeast of the Papua New Guinean mainland – en route from New Zealand to the Philippines, when the incident occurred.

Milne Bay Governor, Titus Philemon, only learned the news from local villagers several days after the ship ran aground.

Nurur Rahman, executive manager of Maritime Operations at the National Maritime Safety Authority (NMSA), told IPS that fuel oil, which leaked from one of the ship’s tanks, had spread along approximately 115 metres of the island’s coastline.

The remote Kwaiawata Island, which is no more than three kilometres long and located in the Samarai Murua District north of the Jomard Passage – a busy international shipping lane – has a population of about 200 people.  Henry Vailasi, Milne Bay Provincial Administrator, said there weren’t any coastal villages in the direct vicinity of the stricken vessel, but the oil spill had impacted the island’s shoreline.

Milne Bay contains a high diversity of corals and marine life, including more than 1,000 species of fish, 630 species of molluscs and 360 species of hard coral, as well as seagrasses and mangrove forests.  Coral reefs are vital to the livelihoods of local communities, providing habitats for fish and protection to island coastlines. Seventy percent of households in the Samarai Murua District depend on fisheries and other marine resources for subsistence.

In a public statement the NMSA said a Papua New Guinea tugboat has been at the site of the MV Asian Lily since Dec. 27 and a team of international salvage experts was currently onboard the vessel with its crew.

Representatives of the ship owners met with local villagers last week regarding the incident, a meeting that will likely be followed in due course by a consultation between national and provincial authorities and affected communities.

A spokesperson for Pacific Towing PNG Ltd, which is working to salvage the vessel, said the oil leak had been contained and the scale of the damage to the vessel was being assessed. Preparations are currently underway for an attempted refloating of the ship on Jan. 10.

On Jan. 5, the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation, which has been engaged to advise the government on how best to address the oil spill, presented a shoreline clean up proposal to authorities in Papua New Guinea.

Milne Bay presents serious navigational challenges to shipping, with hazards including extensive reef systems and many maritime areas not yet properly charted.  The Jomard Passage, which lies to the west of the Louisiade Archipelago in the south of the province, connecting the Coral and Solomon Seas, is plied by up to 1,000 ships, including bulk carriers, every year.  Many are engaged in commerce between the Australian east coast and North Asia.

There have been several maritime mishaps in recent years.  In 2006, the bulk carrier, Zhi Qiang, with a cargo of 40,000 tonnes of raw sugar, ran aground on a reef in the Louisiade Archipelago during a voyage from northern Queensland, Australia, to Korea, releasing heavy fuel oil and raw sugar into the sea.

Vailasi told IPS that the provincial government was seriously concerned about the level of guidance and monitoring of ships through Milne Bay and the Jomard Passage.

“This vessel did not have a pilot onboard at the time it went aground,” he said. “We want the region to be a compulsory pilot area and we have asked the NMSA to advise us on how this can be done.”

“This is a wakeup call for the government and ship owners,” Kaluwin stressed.  “There is a regional oil spill contingency plan, but developing national and provincial oil spill contingency plans remains a challenge facing the government.”

A recent National Marine Pollution Risk Assessment conducted by the NMSA and PNG Ports Corporation, in association with international consultants, reported that the country’s maritime laws need to be updated and aligned with all International Maritime Organisation (IMO) conventions.

The report further stated that until five new marine pollution bills, drafted by the NMSA, are fully enacted, the government’s powers to prevent and control marine pollution from ships, and enforce the payment of compensation from polluters, are constrained.

(END)