A Mexican opposition activist filed a lawsuit to stop the construction of an $ 8.9 billion oil refinery by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, claiming it is being built on land reserved for environmental protection.
The petition for amparo, filed in August, claims that state giant Petróleos Mexicanos is illegally building the Dos Bocas refinery in Tabasco, the president’s home state, in an area that it promised to preserve and that it drafted public documents to hide possible environmental damage.
The project “violates the right to a healthy environment and the polluter pays principle set forth in the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States,” says the lawsuit. “It would seem that Pemex forgot all the wildlife it found and that, as a result of the 2007 ruling, it was in charge of conservation.”
The court documents provided by the legal team of activist Emilio Vázquez Rosario show that state authorities have requested numerous extensions to have the required documents in order for the case. The last extension is until January 10. Unlike many countries, Mexico does not make court documents public during a case. The government did not respond to a request for comment.
Pemex’s promise to protect the land was made in public government documents previously reported by Bloomberg News.
Last month, López Obrador presented a decree granting its main infrastructure projects national security protections that order authorities to issue provisional permits within five days of their request. It is not clear if the decree can be applied retroactively to previous projects.
Rain of criticism
López Obrador, known as AMLO, has staked a great deal of political capital in Dos Bocas. He regularly promotes it as a key project for gas self-sufficiency and most weeks shows videos of his progress at his morning press conference. The project has been criticized by environmentalists, who say the site was home to a protected mangrove, and by financial analysts for its high price. It is expected to start operating fully in 2023.
The lawsuit, which was filed before the judge for the eighth district of Tabasco, argues that Pemex made a legally binding commitment in 2006 and 2007 to protect the coastal zone and any place, including the mangroves, in the area where the refinery is being built. by the sea. The environment ministry granted Pemex permission to develop oil and gas fields in the vicinity for 20 years, on the condition that it would not build anything new in the surrounding areas that contain rare flora and fauna, files show.
The judge recently dismissed a request by Vázquez to stop the project, claiming that the refinery has been disruptive and could damage the surrounding area. It has yet to rule on the main part of the lawsuit, which deals with whether the authorization of the project was illegal.
In early September, the judge threatened to fine a government agency if it did not promptly present various documents to the court. However, no such fine appears to have been imposed.
Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle denied there were mangroves at the site in an interview with Bloomberg News in August, despite the country’s environmental regulator fining a third in 2019 for cutting them down.
Climate change
Vázquez, who is a member of the opposition Citizen Movement, said he is requesting protection in part because Tabasco is one of the Mexican states most exposed to the effects of climate change. Vázquez spent several years working for the conservative opposition party, the PAN, before joining an unsuccessful attempt to create an alternative party and ultimately becoming a member of Movimiento Ciudadano, the fourth largest group in Mexico’s Senate. .
“The idea of having a Tabasco president with an archaic, arcane project that is harmful to the environment and the health of the people of Tabasco is incredible,” he said in an interview.
The refinery is at the center of a push by AMLO to revive state energy companies, often at the expense of the environment. Dozens of renewable energy projects have stalled, while the state-owned company burns high-sulfur and highly polluting oil. Last year a coal plant was reopened. Meanwhile, a $ 3.4 billion project to reforest vast areas of rainforest has accidentally fueled the widespread loss of forest cover. Another of the president’s major infrastructure projects, a tourist railroad in the southeast of the country, has generated controversy by threatening the rainforest and the habitat of hundreds of endangered jaguars.
The Tabasco lawsuit cites satellite images that appear to show that more mangroves have been cut down since construction began, purportedly to facilitate vehicle access to the site. The fact that the mangroves continued to be cut down shows that the regulatory arm of the environment ministry, the Security, Energy and Environment Agency (ASEA), has not adequately inspected or supervised the refinery, the lawsuit alleges.
ASEA has been led since 2019 by a former López Obrador adviser, who was rejected by the Senate when he was nominated for various other regulatory positions.
The demand
The request for amparo also alleges that, to prevent people from knowing the damage that could occur, the government drafted public versions of the refinery’s environmental impact studies, violating the public’s right to participate in its authorization process.
In the documents drawn up, “it is impossible to know the three polygons that will make up the Project, which makes any scrutiny of the environmental effects that it will have,” the lawsuit alleges. “This information would have allowed the authority to confront a reality, there was a mangrove wetland on the site and, therefore, legally the development of the Project could not be evaluated, much less authorized.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Pemex stated in its permit applications that the refinery would affect a much smaller area than in reality. The Pemex data “does not respond to technical evidence of how the gases will spread, much less the environmental impact they will have,” the lawsuit alleges.
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