Several NGOs, including Greenpeace, on Tuesday denounced an oil leak covering 400 km² in the Gulf of Mexico, near a gas production platform whose explosion and fire killed two workers on July 7. The leak, evidenced by satellite images according to NGOs, began around July 4, they said in a statement criticizing authorities’ “complete opacity” around the oil spill.
State-owned Pemex later in the day admitted a leak, involving a “volume of hydrocarbons” that is “minimal”. “Most of the spilled volume was recovered immediately,” Pemex added in its statement.
Pemex denounced the NGOs’ “bad faith estimate”: “For it to be true, more than one and a half million barrels of oil would have had to spill. Pemex, however, did not mention the satellite images the associations released. NGOs have pointed to a 152% increase in accident frequency over the past two years. Industrial flagship of national sovereignty, Pemex drags a debt of 107.4 billion dollars.