Oil leak

Brazil's Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAM) announced it is fining Chevron the maximum $27.6 million (20.6 million euros) allowed under current Brazilian law, according to institute chairman Curt Trennepohl.

Brazil's National Oil Agency (ANP) has threatened to impose two additional fines of $28 million each on Chevron for releasing "false information" and for not having adequate equipment to contain the spill: all told, Chevron faces possible additional penalties of over 40 million euros.

Too lenient

The environmental organization Greenpeace said it believes the penalties are too light.

"That doesn't impress a company like Chevron at all, they can easily come up with sums like that," Kai Britt of Greenpeace Germany told Deutsche Welle. In the second quarter of 2011, the US energy giant raked in a net income of $7.7 billion.

The current fine is the maximum possible under a Brazilian environmental protection law that dates back to 1998. Thirteen years later and after taking into account inflation rates, the fine should amount to more than twice as much, namely 47 million euros: lenient fines give the impression that pollution is profitable, according to Leandra Goncalves, a Brazilian biologist and Greenpeace climate expert.

"A 20.5 million euro fine is no big deal for the third-largest oil company in the world," Goncalves told Deutsche Welle. "They make that kind of money in an hour."

A lesson learned?

Chevron has accepted full responsibility for the incident. "We are committed to deploying resources until the sheen can no longer be detected," the company said in a press release.

The leak was detected on November 7 after a 400-meter-long (1,312-foot-long) fracture in a pipeline left an oil slick on the ocean.

"Chevron got caught and now, the firm is forced to react," Britt said. "Of course, they've learned their lesson from the crude oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. They're downplaying the amounts of oil spilled."

There is conflicting information about the current situation off the Brazilian coast. According to Chevron, about 2,400 barrels of oil leaked into the ocean before it was able to plug the well. According to ANP, however, oil continues to seep from a 400-meter long fracture. The government estimates that more than 5,000 barrels flowed into the water; taking into account the size of the slick - currently about 8 kilometers long and up to 300 meters wide - the US environmental group Skytruth has estimated spillage of up to 15,000 barrels of oil.

In the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year, about 3,000 barrels of oil flowed into the ocean every day for several months.

Incalculable long-term effects

It is impossible to asses the full extent of the damage to the environment at this point, Britt said.

"The long-term effects are a problem," Britt said. "What happens when oil is washed ashore? Right now, we'd have to take a so-called fingerprint of the oil, so that years later, we could still identify it if it washes ashore. In the Gulf of Mexico, Greenpeace took such 'genetic fingerprints' of the spilled oil." In the future, that would be a way to get the companies responsible for the leaks to pay for the clean-up.

But some damage can not be repaired no matter how much money is involved, Leandra Goncalves said.

"A year after the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, only 10 percent of the damaged coastal ecosystem has recovered," she said. "That means that Brazil will face the consequences of the Chevron spill for a long time."

Chevron's appraisal well in the Frade field is situated in water depths of about 1,200 meters; it's a wildlife habitat for humpback whales and dolphins and also important for the fishing industry.

"Chevron is using dispersants to dissolve the oil; they don't want pictures of an oil slick in the media," Britt said. The Greenpeace expert warned of long-term effects for those at the end of the food chain: people: "Oil is toxic and carcinogenic. It sinks to the bottom of the ocean and poisons the sea bed, plants and animals. At some point, it lands on our dinner plates."

Huge reserves

Goncalves said she is concerned that it took so long for Chevron to report the incident and plug the leak, adding that it showed how poorly prepared the firm was for accidents.

"It shows a lack of infrastructure and emergency plans and proves the indifference of the Brazilian government that did not act in a timely fashion and has failed as a reliable partner for the civilian society," she said.

Brazil's national oil company Petrobras has a 30 percent share in the Frade oil project, Chevron holds 51.7 percent of the shares. Extraction capacity is at 79,000 barrels per day.

Over the past years, researchers have discovered large oil reserves off Brazil's coasts, all of them several kilometers under the ocean.

Drilling deeper and deeper under the sea to reach oil is irresponsible, said Greenpeace's Britt. Not only that: it is dangerous to drill where humans physically can't go. "The work is done by robots, which may be cost-efficient, but in case of an emergency, there is no way to react appropriately," Britt said.

Possible oil spills are but one of the reasons Greenpeace is calling for an immediate end to all deep sea drilling.

"If we were to extract all of the oil that is currently available to us, planet earth would face a climate collapse," Britt said.

Author: Mirjam Gehrke/Ericka de Sá (db)
Editor: Sean Sinico