Volunteers have started a beach clean-up in a part of Mexico where environmental officials believe oil is washing up on the shores as a result of an alleged leak implicating state energy major Pemex.
The oil “will, of course, have a serious environmental impact,” according to Alejandro Brown Gantus, deputy public prosecutor for environmental crimes in the southeastern state of Campeche.
“There were more than 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) of hydrocarbons in the sea and this was dispersed with the sea currents along all the beaches in the Gulf,” he added.
Residents and environmentalists have attempted to clean a beach in the town of Lerma in recent days, where areas of black were visible in the waves.
On July 18, environmental groups reported an alleged oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico near where an explosion earlier in the month killed two workers at a Pemex gas production platform.
According to the NGOs, which included Greenpeace, satellite photographs showed that the spill began on July 4, three days before the detonation, and had expanded over 400 square kilometers (154 square miles).
Debt-laden Pemex, which has had a string of mishaps in recent years, admitted to detecting a leak in the Gulf of Mexico on July 3 and repairing it on July 22.
However, it asserted that no spill was caused by the explosion and suggested that pollution in the sea was caused by “natural hydrocarbon emissions.”
