The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, has stated in a statement that "he has verified in the session of the Board of Directors of the Port Authority held on Friday morning that the director of exploitation and production of the company REPSOL, Javier Moro Morán, has formally requested a land reservation for its logistics base in the three port areas of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria managed by the Port Authority, precisely establishing the perimeter of the surface to be reserved and the berthing lines that it would need".
He adds in the statement that the "Port Authority clarifies to REPSOL that the rule for the occupation and use of land is regulated by the consolidated text of the Law of Ports and the Merchant Marine and does not allow reservations of any kind, as these are subject to a regime of use that promotes competition and competition in accordance with a formal procedure set out in articles 83 et seq. of the aforementioned consolidated text, requiring a specific request that has the requirements specified in article 84.1 of said rule".
The president of the Cabildo regrets "the banana treatment that REPSOL, like the Ministry of Industry, continues to give to the Canary Islands, ignoring the rule that a multinational like this company should know, intending to skip the necessary competition established in the Law and presenting a request, which from the administrative point of view does not comply with any of the requirements established in the regulated procedures of application provided for in the same law for a concession of this nature".
On the other hand, San Ginés continues explaining that "in view of the document presented by REPSOL itself for the establishment of its logistics base in Lanzarote, a new and crude deception emerges, when the president of the company, Mr. Bufrau, offered the Cabildos of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura an investment of 53 million euros requesting an authorization from these institutions that it does not need".
He continues explaining that "the truth is that from an elementary analysis of the proposal, it is the company itself that estimates the total cost for the establishment of said logistics base at 22 million euros, but these are not investments, because, in the first place, 14 million are for the supply of fuel that REPSOL itself admits would necessarily have to be supplied in the Puerto de la Luz, in Gran Canaria, due to the material impossibility of doing so in Lanzarote or Fuerteventura; in the second place, about 4 million euros would be for the expenses derived from helicopter rental and its logistics; and in the third place, more than 2 million euros, for the rental of large tonnage cranes, which adds up to about 19 million euros. That is to say, of the 53 million euros, at most only 4 million euros of dubious investment would remain, inflating the real investments that they say the local administrations have rejected by about 50 million euros, in a fraudulent and miserable attempt to confront the society of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, playing with the unemployment situation that we unfortunately suffer in the eastern islands".
Pedro San Ginés assures that "in the same way they intend to manipulate and deceive public opinion by apparently offering enormous possibilities for creating jobs, when the reality is that the work derived from the prospecting is carried out, as in the subsequent exploitation phase, by qualified personnel who come with the drilling structures. Initially, Repsol spoke of generating up to 50,000 jobs, last week, the president of the oil company announced that there would actually be about 5,000, and now we see that in Lanzarote they say that all the personnel involved in the operations will be approximately 20 to 30 people".
Finally, they highlight in the statement that "the Repsol project contemplates for this island, which has its declaration as a World Biosphere Reserve as one of its main tourist assets, using the Port of Arrecife as a storage place for the toxic sludge extracted during the drilling phase; these residues require to be subsequently transferred to other geographies to receive the necessary treatments. In addition, the oil company adds the need to also store liquid and solid chemical products in the port, turning this port space into a deposit of highly toxic products and waste from the drilling, a few meters from where cruise ships dock and tens of thousands of tourists disembark per month".