Thousands of fishermen from the fishing port of Ancon, north of Lima, one of the areas worst affected by the spill, marched through the streets of the municipality of the same name, demanding that the company take responsibility and compensate them for the damage they suffered. The beaches, the sea, the animals and plants that prevent them from earning a living for a long time due to pollution.
In addition, a group of environmentalists organized sit-ins in front of the Spanish Embassy in Peru and in front of Repsol’s offices in Lima, demanding that transnational Iberians comply with their obligations to and towards the state.
At the same time, environmental decontamination expert Marino Morikawa warned that if quick action is not taken, the black spot, which has advanced hundreds of kilometers into the sea, could reach the Piura region, a thousand kilometers north of here.
For its part, the Spanish embassy issued a statement regretting what it described as the “unfortunate incident”, without commenting on the responsibilities of “Repsol”.
The most dangerous was Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who confirmed that the spill is the largest oil environmental disaster in history, because in the past twenty years there have been more than 9,000 spills out of a total of 9,743 barrels of crude oil, and in the last of them it was six thousand barrels at once.
The health specialist ruled out that the disaster was caused by abnormal waves as a result of the eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga, adding that Repsol “showed an absolute level of irresponsibility and a very high level of incompetence.”
It took the company several hours to notify the authorities of what had happened, and in that report it cited a seven-gallon leak, and tried to blame the Navy for not informing it of the roughness of the sea.
However, according to environmental portal Sudor, the company has confirmed for years that it will be able to offload oil to the La Pampilla refinery, operated by Repsol, from 2019, even with waves three and a half meters high.
Additionally, athletes who participated in a sailing competition between the nearby port of Callao testified that at the time of the spill there were no abnormal waves, and one of them, Alec Hughes, announced to the local press.
Hughes noted that at about the time of the spill, caused by the rupture of the crude dump valve, he heard two loud noises, like explosions, coming from the tanker of Mary Dorictum, the protagonist of the spill.
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