Claims from the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) that affect health and surrounding communities have increased by 50% since 2020while there are events that are not reported, such as constant oil spills at sea, equivalent to more than 375 tanker trucks, environmental organizations such as Greenpeace denounced on Monday.
“These types of accidents, which have implications for the health of workers, have increased by 50% as of 2020. This, taking the data that is prepared based on Pemex reports,” Pablo Ramírez said at a press conference. , from Greenpeace.
Likewise, environmentalists pointed out that, between 2020 and 2022, Pemex recorded a 152% increase in the frequency of what it calls “accidents”, while the severity of these claims has risen by 126%.
Meanwhile, they criticized that the budget allocated to the maintenance of their extractive platforms on land and sea has been reduced by 49%.
“This has caused a time bomb that constantly translates into fatalities, not from casual accidents, but from precarious working conditions, without the will of the industry to solve it,” they indicated in a position signed by organizations such as Alianza Mexicana against Fracking, CartoCrítica, Mexican Observatory of Methane Emissions, among others.
Recently, the rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded the rating of the Mexican state oil company to a “highly speculative” grade due to the multiple claims that Pemex is facing, ranging from a fire eye at sea, in July 2021, to the most recent explosion of a platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
Spills, ecological disasters
On July 7, the explosion of the Pemex platform called “Nohoch-A” was recorded, affecting 37% of its total production and leaving two people dead.
Around this incident, there has been an oil spill in the sea that has not been informed by the Government or by the Mexican State company.
According to satellite images, explained Guillermo Tamburini, it has been possible to identify spills for up to 400 square kilometerswhich would be equivalent to twice the city of Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, western Mexico.
Regarding this oil spill in the sea, the geographer also pointed out that it could have started on July 4, before the explosion, and that it remained active until Sunday the 16th, exceeding 1,000 square kilometers.
He said like this”there have been multiple spills of significant magnitude on a recurring or permanent basis“, for which he called attention to the care of the environment, since he explained that a single drop of crude oil can contaminate up to 25 liters of water.
He explained that if only 10% of the areas reported on this day have an oil layer 0.1 millimeters thick, the spills would reach 7,000 cubic meters.
This would represent the content of two Olympic swimming pools or about 175 tanker trucks.
He added that, based on this estimate, the set of all these emissions in the last two decades could exceed 10,000 cubic meters or “perhaps double”, which would be “a great ecological disaster on which due care has not been taken.” considerations”.
The specialist emphasized that this amount is equivalent to the content of 375 tanker trucks dumped into the sea indiscriminately.
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