Spain is famous as a tourist destination for millions of Northern Europeans, who flock to the country in the summertime in search of sunshine and a more relaxed way of life.
The Costa Del Sol is one of the most popular coastal regions in the country. But that hasn’t stopped the Ministry of Environment from releasing a positive Environmental Impact statement on a gas prospecting project in the region by RIPSA, Repsol’s oil investigation unit. The government has also green-lighted its plans for prospecting off the Basque coast, in the north of Spain.
Repsol wants to explore the seabed nine kilometers off the coast of Malaga, in Southern Spain. But
Oceana, an ocean conservation organization, said habitats and marine animals that it recently documented during its
Ranger Expedition could be destroyed if the project goes ahead.
“Repsol’s and the Spanish Ministry for the Environment’s attitudes are outrageous. They have either conducted an Impact Assessment and are hiding all this information from the public, or they have not even bothered to study the area that will be affected by these activities,” said Ricardo Aguilar, research director at Oceana in Europe.
Antonio Pasolini, the author
Oceana said it documented threatened species that are protected by national and international regulations. The organization also found important habitats such as oyster reefs, white-cluster anemones, gorgonian gardens and extensions of sponges and deep-sea ascidia in the exact location that Repsol plans to carry out its search for hydrocarbons. Bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins and loggerhead sea turtles would also be affected.
“There is a serious contradiction between the speeches given by government officials and the facts. Instead of conducting studies on the environmental impact of spill-free offshore wind farms to promote their implementation, the government just keeps on granting hydrocarbon prospecting licenses on Spain’s entire coast,” said Xavier Pastor, Oceana’s executive director in Europe.
Oceana said there’s further evidence that Repsol’s environmental analysis is flawed in the fact that the company has ignored the existence of two marine canyons in the middle of their exploratory test drilling plans (Calahonda and Fuengirola Canyons).
“This is a big gap that cannot be disregarded by a proper Environmental Impact Assessment, given the fact that marine canyons and other marine elevations of the area are priority objectives for global research and marine conservation, due to their high productivity and life-concentration spots for the ocean,” the organization said.
Besides animal life, important deep-sea areas of regional importance in the Mediterranean listed by the Barcelona Convention, such as the Posidonia oceanic seagrass meadows, maerl or detritical and sediment-rich deeps, would also be endangered.
“The increase of offshore hydrocarbon extraction projects goes against European energy policies focused on renewables. Each new project represents a backward step in the fight against climate change and ocean acidification,” added Pastor.
Repsol recently issued a
press statement saying it has been named the most transparent and sustainable oil company in the world, according to the 2011 edition of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes.
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