Ecological disaster and destruction of the maritime ecosystem: these are the heavy accusations made by the Prosecutor of Campos, a city in the state of Rio de Janeiro, against the top management of Chevron for the crude oil spill that occurred last November off the coast of Brazil, when due to an accident in a well 2.400 barrels of oil were lost at sea. The leak was plugged only after two weeks.
After four months of investigation, the Prosecutor's Office has requested the indictment of 11 Chevron managers, five from Transocean, the company that operated the probe in the well where the leak has opened, and one from Contecom, a crude oil storage company. Among the suspects there is also George Raymond Buck III, president of Chevron Brasil, which, according to prosecutor Eduardo Santos de Oliveira, "was the protagonist of one of the largest ecological disasters that has occurred in the country, but which is only one of many that are part of the history of Chevron during operations in various countries" . The suspects were ordered to hand over their passports, to avoid returning to their countries of origin.
According to the prosecution, the accident that occurred on November 7 would in fact have destroyed the ecosystem off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and could have caused the extinction of some species, as well as having caused considerable economic damage to the Brazilian state. As if that weren't enough, last week a new accident occurred in another Chevron well, still in the same area. The two events are not related, but according to Campos' prosecutor all this would indicate that the American giant does not have "the conditions to operate freely in Brazil".
The prosecutor also asked for the seizure of all the assets of the suspects and the payment of 400 thousand euros for each manager and 4 million euros for each company involved in the accident. In fact, Chevron, in addition to having underestimated the danger, even after the crude oil began to leak, would not have acted promptly and effectively to stop the wildfire, indeed "the mechanical dispersion option, which caused the oil spill , made the environmental disaster worse”.
According to Chevron's lawyer, however, the allegations of the Campos prosecutor's office are illegitimate given that the accident did not occur in Brazilian waters, but 12 km from the coast. According to Nilo Batista, therefore, the jurisdiction would not lie with the Campos prosecutor's office, but with that of Rio de Janeiro, the city where Chevron is based.
Even without mentioning the American multinational, yesterday Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff however, he stated, referring to the exploitation of oil fields, that "the companies that have come here must know that the safety protocol must be respected and there will be no exceptions".
Now, in addition to the judicial plan, Chevron is also at great risk from an economic point of view, given that the recent incidents could destroy the agreement for the exploitation of the immense deposits of pré-sal, a thick layer of crude oil that extends for thousands of kilometers off the Brazilian coast, at a depth of 7-8 kilometers. A colossal deal which, unlike oil, risks evaporating instead.
