The Supreme Court has dismissed the request made by Repsol for it to address the Ministry of the Environment with the aim of commissioning reports on whether the areas of the proposed Sites of Community Importance (SCI) coincided with the oil exploration areas in the Canary Islands. The Cabildo of Fuerteventura has described this decision as a "blow to the interests of Repsol and the Ministry of Industry".
In this sense, it has assured that the multinational oil company "intended with this that the Government of Spain itself would issue a report guaranteeing the supposed harmlessness of its oil businesses in a marine area recognized worldwide as a biodiversity sanctuary since, among other values, it houses about thirty species of cetaceans".
Fuerteventura has insisted that the Supreme Court now rejects this request to Repsol and "only agrees to incorporate a response from the European Commission to a Member of the European Parliament in which it says that the Commission will wait for the Environmental Impact Statement to be formulated before pronouncing itself". "However, it does not attend to the requests of the multinational oil company for the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA) to prepare a series of reports following the questions and approaches made by Repsol itself," said the president of the Cabildo of Fuerteventura, Mario Cabrera.
This Cabildo has recalled that this request from Repsol to the Supreme Court "to claim reports according to its interests to MAGRAMA" is made after Repsol itself and the representation of the Ministry of Industry had opposed "without success a claim" of this Cabildo "to suspend the entire process until all the documentation relating to the proposal of the marine SCI of the south or east of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, which was being processed by the Ministry of the Environment, was incorporated into it".
Another decision "contrary" to Repsol's interests
Mario Cabrera considers that this decision, of April 9, adds to the previous one issued by the Supreme Court on March 27, "also contrary" to the interests that "share" the oil company and the Ministry of Industry.
On March 27, the third section of the administrative litigation chamber of the Supreme Court notified the suspension of the appointment for deliberation, voting and ruling on the contentious-administrative appeal filed by the Cabildo of Fuerteventura against Royal Decree 547/2012, of March 16, which authorized oil exploration in the Canary Islands in nine large areas off the coasts of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote.
This suspension was made in response to a request submitted by the Cabildo of Fuerteventura itself, in which the attention of the Supreme Court was drawn to the lack in the documentation of the oil multinational's project, which is being processed by the Ministry of Industry, of everything concerning the scientific studies and research work of the Life+Indemares Project on marine spaces with high environmental value.
The Supreme Court agreed in that decision to carry out the test, by MAGRAMA, consisting of providing the complete documentation justifying the initiative to include among the Sites of Community Importance (SCI) the so-called "Marine Space of the east and south of Lanzarote-Fuerteventura" within the Life+Indemares Project.
It also demanded that the Ministry justify why of the 10 SCI areas proposed in Life+Indemares, nine have already been publicly presented and processed, and only that of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote remains, which affects the area of oil exploration. MAGRAMA is now in the middle of a deadline to provide the required documentation, so that it can then be evaluated by the parties for five days.
Fuerteventura has insisted that the marine SCI "affects a large part of the surface whose authorizations are processed by the Ministry of Industry to carry out oil exploration by the multinational Repsol, and is in the vicinity of the wells where Repsol intends to start drilling".
