The Argentine court authorized oil exploration on Monday in three maritime zones off the Atlantic coast of the province of Buenos Aires, but demanded the “maximum level of control in operations.”
Source: AFP
In the ruling published by the Argentine press, the Federal Court of Appeals (second instance) of Mar del Plata, 400 km to the south, authorized “the continuity of prospecting activities involving the project”.
The judges imposed three conditions: that “permanent observers” be included to ensure the care of the Right Whale Natural Monument; that seismic prospecting be carried out at a distance greater than 50 km from the sector that includes the area called “Blue hole” and that activities must be “immediately suspended” in the event of any significant damage to the environment.
The Federal Chamber thus considered fulfilled the demands that it had imposed on the authorities last June before lifting the precautionary measure.
“There is no doubt that the National Parks Administration took the intervention that was legally its responsibility, that the director of the APN issued a precise statement regarding the impacts that the project would generate on the Southern Right Whale, that it positively valued the mitigation measures in this regard, and that the new presentation of (the Norwegian oil company) Equinor incorporated specific measures related to the reports collected in the APN”, the judges opined.
Also read: Journalist jailed in Egypt since 2015 freed
In response, the environmental organization Greenpeace called a march for Tuesday in Mar del Plata, under the slogan “Argentine Sea without oil.”
“The Federal Court of Appeals yielded to pressure from the government and companies and authorized offshore seismic exploration in the Argentine Sea. But we are not going to allow the oil companies to destroy our sea, ”denounced the NGO on her Twitter account.
At the end of 2021the government of President Alberto Fernández authorized by decree the carrying out of seismic exploration studies by the Norwegian oil company Equinortogether with the state company YPF and the Anglo-Dutch Shell, in offshore areas of the Argentine Sea.
But last February, amid protests by environmental organizations, a judge allowed a presentation by the mayor’s office of Mar del Plata, a seaside resort that attracts millions of tourists each summer.
The judge issued a precautionary measure to stop exploration and ordered environmental impact studies to be carried out in the area.
