Repsol goes on the counterattack.
The Spanish company believes that the accident that caused the spill of more than 10,000 barrels of oil off the coast of Peru was caused by a sudden movement of the oil tanker
Mare Doricum
that destroyed the hoses and the unloading system, as reported to the authorities. Peruvian.
The company has initiated legal action against the shipowner and his insurer, according to sources close to the case.
The Peruvian subsidiary of Repsol Refinería La Pampilla (Relapasaa) is the one that has launched the procedure.
The first thing that it has demanded is the provision of guarantees in Peru that cover both environmental damage and that directly suffered by third parties such as fishermen, merchants and workers in the area, as well as all the expenses that Relapasaa has incurred in the tasks of repair and cleaning.
Repsol has not yet quantified the amount of the claim, but it will be a multimillion dollar figure, taking into account the seriousness of what happened.
Regardless of whether the movement of the ship was originally caused by abnormal waves caused by the submarine eruption in Tonga, Repsol maintains that the immediate cause was that this uncontrolled movement in full discharge of crude oil destroyed the submarine facilities and tore off the hoses and the drainage system. discharge, the so-called plem (acronym for
pipeline end manifold
or pipe end collector), which were "in perfect condition" according to the Supervisory Body for Investment in Energy and Mining (Osinergmin).
Bad practice
In addition, the Spanish group considers itself the victim of malpractice by the captain, who did not notify the ship of the loss of position, depriving the company of essential information and preventing a faster and more effective reaction.
The thesis of the sudden displacement of the ship as the origin of the ecological disaster is supported, among others, by a report carried out by the consultants Inerco and Orbital Eos, which shows the movements of the Mare Doricum from the position data issued by the tanker itself.
In addition, it has been explicitly defended by the executive director of Repsol in Peru, Jaime Fernández-Cuesta, last Friday afternoon in Peru (around midnight from Friday to Saturday in Spain).
“Our position is that this rupture and this spill has been caused by a sudden and anomalous movement of the ship, something that should never happen.
During the unloading operation, it has to be absolutely still and perfectly moored with the ship's own moorings to our buoys and with its anchors and anchoring methods”, charged the Repsol executive, in his first appearance before the investigation commission opened by the Peruvian Congress, specifically through the Commission of Andean, Amazonian, Afro-Peruvian peoples, environment and ecology.
“[The oil tanker] moves more than 50 meters (...) and this is what causes the spill: the ship continues unloading for a few minutes after breaking.
When the outcropping of fuel to the surface is noticed, the contingency plan is activated and within an hour the entire terminal area is surrounded, ”he explained.
Asked about the possibility that the origin of the spill had been sabotage, Fernández-Cuesta stressed that the only hypothesis is that of the "accident caused by the sudden movement of the ship."
Most of the participating congressmen disgraced the representatives of the company for not having attended two ordinary sessions and the "disregard of the affected people".
And they required the studies on which Repsol relies on the cause of the spill and whether human errors had been detected.
“Both issues are part of the judicial and criminal investigation that is underway that will include expert reports on all the materials involved in this accident and all human behavior.
That investigation will shed light on what happened,” Fernández-Cuesta excused himself.
change of strategy
Repsol has changed its strategy.
Initially, he focused on explaining that the spill was the result of abnormal waves apparently produced by the tsunami that reached the Pacific coast after the submarine eruption in Tonga.
Although the ship's captain himself left in writing that abnormal waves had caused the oil tanker's moorings to break, the waves thesis had been contested by different instances.
Now, after the studies carried out and the first conclusions about what caused the accident, Repsol prefers to focus on the immediate cause: that the ship destroyed its facilities.
Thus, if anything, it will be the owner of the ship who must be justified by the waves.
The shipping company for which the tanker worked is the Singaporean Teekay Tankers Chartering Pte. Ltd,
In his speech before the congressional commission, Fernández-Cuesta indicated: “There has been information denying that there was a tsunami on the Peruvian beaches that afternoon.
The truth is that we are not concentrating now on whether it was a movement of the sea that moved the ship that later proceeded to break our submarine installation, but rather the objective and verified fact is that the ship moved”.
After the intervention of the representatives of Repsol, the commission of the Peruvian Congress asked the supervisors.
Their intervention was quite favorable to the interests of the energy company for two reasons: they also formulated the hypothesis of the sudden displacement of the ship as the cause of the accident and pointed out that the Relapasaa facilities were perfectly operational.
Elías Efrain Fox Joo, manager of Osinergmin's Liquid Hydrocarbons Supervision, said that if there is an “unexpected event” that breaks the facilities, supervision cannot prevent this.
“That is part of the improper maneuver that could have occurred when the cables broke.
If one of the five buoys does not work [because the mooring breaks], the ship becomes unstable.
Such is the destabilization that can cause a simple movement to cause such a force that it breaks any structure.
But we still cannot say that this is the case,” he pointed out.
But even more important for Repsol is that the president of the Board of Directors of Osinergmin, Jaime Raúl Mendoza Gacon, pointed out that the facilities were in perfect condition before the accident: “In the case of terminal 2, several supervision works have been carried out.
These works ensure that the pipeline and the plem were operational and in good condition.
This includes cathodic protection, the part of internal inspections, through intelligent tools, hydrostatic testing of the system and inspection of the same that has been damaged.
All of this ensured that these facilities were in perfect condition to operate”, he pointed out to the congressmen.
Cleanup
The chief executive of the Spanish oil company in Peru also defended himself against criticism for the delays and lack of transparency expressed by the dozen deputies who participated in the session of the investigation commission held last Friday: "We are the only one responsible for It is taking charge of the remediation and taking responsibility for cleaning the Peruvian coastline and beaches, and for returning the marine fauna to its natural state, doing everything possible to serve the affected populations,” he said.
Repsol highlighted that, among the companies contracted to manage the spill and to "return the Peruvian coastline to its natural state", there are "the two largest benchmarks in the world in spill management": the Finnish Lamor and the British Oil Spill Response.
“Usually one or the other is hired, but we have hired both to take advantage of the best practices of each one,” Fernández-Cuesta said.
The Peruvian subsidiaries of the Spanish Indra and Abengoa are also included among the companies hired by Repsol for the "evaluation and cleaning" work.
Indra is helping with the drone device (helicopter reconnaissance flights, the use of satellites and on-site presence are complemented) and Abengoa is supporting beach cleaning operations.
According to Repsol data, 2,400 people, 144 units of heavy machinery, 89 boats and 38 skimmers
, a kind of vacuum cleaner with which the crude oil spilled into the sea is extracted,
participate or have participated in the cleaning process .
To a large extent, this machinery has been imported from countries such as the USA, Spain or Finland.
“There are no longer large oil slicks in the sea.
We have promised to deliver the clean sea in mid-February and we are going to comply,” said Luis Vásquez, spokesman for the Peruvian subsidiary of the energy company.
According to the company's own data, the cleaning work had an advance of 67% last Friday.
Fernández-Cuesta also confirmed that the company has insurance with different coverages and that it has activated all of them after the accident.
“We have insurance that covers contingencies like this, any company has them.
The reality is that our greatest concern now is not which of the costs we are assuming for the cleaning and remediation of beaches and coastlines and to care for the affected populations are we going to recover from our insurance, but rather that we are doing it directly with our resources and our means,” he declared.
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