Over a year and a half since an oil spill fouled the coastline north of Lima, Peru’s capital, the government is preparing legislation to improve the response to such accidents. Meanwhile, traces of oil from the 11,900-barrel spill on Jan. 15, 2022 remain in coastal ecosystems, underscoring the persistent contamination such accidents can bring.

Environment Minister Albina Ruiz said on July 20 that the government has detected “excessive hydrocarbons in water and sand” at 17 of 97 monitoring points established after last year’s spill. Fourteen of the sites are on beaches and three are at the base of cliffs or other hard-to-reach places, she said. Among them is an area between the fishing villages of Pasamayo and Chancay, where fishers who work close to shore are still off the water because they worry local fish and shellfish might not be safe to eat.

The spill occurred when a pipe connecting an oil tanker to the Repsol-owned La Pampilla Refinery broke. (See "Peru declares emergency following tanker spill" —EcoAméricas, January 2022.) The slick affected 25 beaches north of Lima, Ruiz said. Oefa, Peru’s environmental oversight agency, has opened eight proceedings to sanction Repsol for environmental violations that carry fines totaling over $25 million, but Repsol has filed appeals in five of the cases, she said. The company also faces sanctions from Peru’s forest service, the agency that oversees national parks, and the public prosecutor’s office.

Compensation issues

Most people who fish or gather shellfish along the coast do so informally and at a small scale that leaves them little economic leeway in such emergencies. Repsol offered compensation during 2022 while negotiating agreements with artisanal-fishing associations based on its estimate of monthly income lost. Some fishers held out for higher amounts to offset future losses and potential health impacts; but most signed the agreements out of need, says Gustavo Vega, director of ConCiencia Marina, a nonprofit that works with fishing communities.

The disaster affected an estimated 10,000 people, including fishers, restaurant owners, vendors, and others whose livelihoods revolve around beaches that were shut down during the summer high season and remained closed to fishing for a year. In July, Repsol reported compensating 9,800 people for lost income in 2022, including 3,700 fishers and 500 others fishing-industry workers. The company declined to reveal the amount. But on its website, Repsol says it has spent one billion soles (US$270 million) on cleanup and compensation.

In May, the government Ombudsman’s Office criticized the compensation system, saying its calculations were not clear and noting that those who signed had to agree not to sue for other damages. Meanwhile, Vega and others say the spill’s mental-health impact went unaddressed. A survey conducted a year after the accident by ConCiencia Marina and the Peru office of the U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund found that over 80% of local fishers reported stress and disruption of their sleeping and eating habits. Nearly nine of 10 fishers said they did not trust information provided by the government.

Concerns of coastal fishers, including uncertainty about whether fish are safe to eat, mirror those of Amazonian communities hit by oil spills in recent decades. In those cases, lawsuits and talks with the government have dragged on for years. On the coast and in the Amazon, scant baseline data makes environmental and health claims hard to prove.

Downplaying a disaster

In the first days after the accident, Repsol underreported the amount of oil spilled, the area affected, and the extent of the damage. Videos of the initial cleanup effort show volunteers wearing masks meant to protect against Covid-19 instead of respirators, and some oil-soaked sand being dumped back into the ocean. “It was obvious that we don’t have protocols for that kind of work,” said Samuel Amorós, director of the Environmental Defense Fund in Peru.

Ruiz became environment minister in Dec. 2022. A month after she took office, the technical secretary of Oefa’s oversight tribunal was fired after local media reported she was married to a Repsol refinery worker when the refinery successfully appealed to the tribunal to overturn a fine of about $1.5 million. Ruiz says her ministry is now drafting a law that would define responsibilities for environmental emergencies, requiring immediate activation of a contingency plan whose activities would become part of a remediation effort.

After the spill, she said, “there was confusion.” Officials declared a 90-day emergency, then, after an evaluation, reimposed it in June for 90 days more. But no post-emergency plan was implemented until March 2023—over five months after the emergency ended. And Repsol has yet to present a remediation plan because current norms give it until October to do so, Ruiz said, adding: “That can’t happen again.”

Amorós underscores the need for timely information, transparency in negotiations, and assessment of community impacts beyond income loss. The Repsol disaster, he says, “is a lesson in what should not have been done.”