The environmental organization Greenpeace will file an appeal with the Supreme Court of Argentina against an offshore oil exploration project in the North Argentina Basin (CAN) led by the Norwegian company Equinor.
Greenpeace made the decision to appeal to the Argentine Supreme Court after this Monday the Federal Chamber of the Buenos Aires city of Mar delSilverrescind a precautionary measure that halted the oil project in Atlantic waters under Argentine jurisdiction.
“We are going to file an extraordinary appeal with the Supreme Court expressing our disagreement with this ruling of the Justice,” Luisina Vueso, coordinator of Greenpeace’s oceans campaign, told EFE.
For Vueso, the ruling of the Federal Court “is very bad and poorly founded considering the battery of forceful argumentation” that Greenpeace had presented against the project.
“It is really outrageous that, despite the favorable ruling of the first instance that we had at first to protect the Argentine Sea, Justice has now ruled in favor of an international corporation,” he said.
The controversy broke out at the end of December 2021, when the Argentine Executive, through a resolution of the Ministry of Environment, gave the green light to the seismic exploration of hydrocarbons in three blocks of the CAN located between 307 and 443 kilometers off the coast of Mar del Plata, the largest holiday center on the Atlantic coast of Argentina and which lives from tourism and fishing.
Equinor is the operator of the three areas, although in the main block, CAN 100 -of 15,000 square kilometers-, it is associated with YPF (BA:YPFD), controlled by the Argentine state, and the Anglo-Dutch Shell (LON:RDSb), and in another, CAN 114, only YPF.
Earlier this year, Greenpeace and other organizations initiated a collective injunction, which joined other legal actions, to achieve the cessation or suspension of all seismic exploration and oil exploitation activities in that area.
Last February, the Federal Court 2 of Mar del Plata resolved the immediate suspension of the approval of the offshore seismic acquisition project in areas CAN 108, CAN 100 and CAN 114.
In lifting the precautionary measure on Monday, the Federal Court of Mar del Plata urged the administrative authorities to permanently maintain “a maximum level of control” over the activities of the project.
For Greenpeace, the project will involve the “destruction” of one of the most important ecosystems in the South Atlantic.
