This article speaks about the clean-up and remediation costs after a major oil spill of more than 10,000 barrels in Peru. The spills occured in late January when a tanker was rocked by waves caused by the eruption of a volcano in Tonga, Repsol and Peruvian officials. Josu Jon Imaz told analysts on a conference call saying “What we are seeing today in cost terms could be around $65 million more or less … this figure could increase in coming weeks,”. Since then, the oil has ravaged around 100 miles of shoreline. Thousands of animals, from penguins to sea otters, have died, and just as many local fishermen have no idea when, if ever, they will be able to return to work.
The main importance of this article of why it is important is the crude oil first swept into Peru’s coast, decimating wildlife, poisoning marine reserves, and destroying livelihoods. Additionally this would cost Peru around 65 millions of dollars. Something I found interesting is that the company Repsol tried covering up the incident at first saying for days the company insisted the spill was just 7 gallons until it was forced to acknowledge it was actually 6,000 barrels of oil which is equivalent to 252,000 gallons. Due to Respol efforts to cover up the oil spill at first they were over 24 hours late to launching its contingency plan for precisely this kind of spill.
This is leaving Peru’s current economy to be plument and become unstable and worrying many officials that they made need aid from other countries. This relates with class that International cooperation normally occurs to disasters for example the Economic Cooperation and Development has invited Peru to open talks to best deal with this problems because they most likely be dealing with a good amount of lawsuits such as fishermen or owners of beach homes, will be able to sue for property damage or lost revenue, with Peruvian law ruling out either punitive damage awards or compensation for environmental harm. With Repsol being in a very unfortunate circumstance many international organizations coming to aid.