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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Peaser01: [QB] http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050515/news_1n15pemex.html [b]Accidents at Mexico's Pemex draw scrutiny[/b] Oil company provides much of the government's income By James C. McKinley Jr. and Elisabeth Malkin NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE May 15, 2005 MEXICO CITY – Juan Gonzalez Duran, who like nearly everyone in Nanchital works for Pemex, the state-owned oil monopoly, had no doubt about who was responsible for his brother's death last month when a work crew cut into the wrong pipeline and six men died in a blast of ammonia gas. Gonzalez blamed a Pemex engineer who had been overseeing the job but left just before the accident. "I was a worker for Pemex for years, and I worked on deep-sea platforms, and there I could tell you many bad things that the engineers would do, that they would not pay attention to the work," he said. "It makes me sick." Gonzalez is not the only one fed up in this region, the heart of the oil and petrochemical industry. The blast that killed his brother and five other workers was the latest in more than 12 pipeline accidents to befall Pemex since October. The spills have focused Mexico's attention on what even company officials acknowledge is an old and poorly maintained network of pipelines. About a third of the network is more than 30 years old, and some pumping equipment is so antiquated that the company cannot find spare parts, Pemex officials say. But the recent spate of accidents also highlights the complicated symbiotic relationship between the company and the government that is supposed to regulate it. Pemex provides about 40 percent of the government's income, and the environmental agency charged with policing the oil company is woefully underfinanced. This year, Pemex's authorized budget for maintenance is almost $1 billion less than it needs, Luis Ramirez Corzo, who became Pemex's director general last December, has said. Lawmakers control Pemex's budget, and it pays some two-thirds of its revenue in taxes. Despite record high oil prices that increased revenues to $69 billion last year, Pemex, short for Petroleos Mexicanos, reported a loss of $1.3 billion. Pemex officials complain that the government mainly uses the oil industry to finance the rest of its spending and puts too little money into infrastructure and maintenance. Environmentalists say the company's sins, including padded payrolls and oil spills, go unpunished because its enormous importance to the nation's coffers gives it unparalleled political power. In particular, the federal environmental enforcement agency, known as Profepa, has proved toothless when policing Pemex facilities, they say. "It's a fact that Profepa is very limited; it definitely follows the party line, they can't touch Pemex much," said Francisco Villagran Ballesteros, a lawyer who has sued Pemex officials over the recent spills. The Profepa chief, Jose Luis Luege, has been reduced to making threats he cannot carry out. On Thursday, he held a news conference to demand that Pemex repair 35 problem pipelines, but he acknowledged that it would cost $770 million. Pemex says it has money to repair just seven. Luege acknowledged that any decision to shut down a major pipeline – and halt a refinery – would probably have to be made by the president. To many Mexicans who can recall catastrophic Pemex accidents in the recent past, the company is synonymous with a callous disregard for safety and the environment. In 1986, a liquefied petroleum gas terminal blew up outside Mexico City, killing more than 500 people. Six years later, a pipeline explosion in Guadalajara killed more than 200 people. Since then, the company has worked to upgrade safety and maintenance, its officials say. It has opened its installations to government inspectors, and Pemex executives now submit to public questions and rebukes in Congress. But the spills in Veracruz suggest that the company has a long way to go to repair decades of neglect along its 38,000 miles of pipelines. Ramirez Corzo said Pemex needed to spend $12.3 billion on maintenance through 2008, a third of that on upgrading pipelines. "This is the crude reality," Ramirez Corzo said in April at a Senate hearing on the Veracruz accidents. "This is the company we have got, not the company we would like to have." Jose Manuel Olivares Paez, a Pemex official in charge of the oil pipelines, said: "Our infrastructure has started to become old and tired. There are always risks, but the key is to evaluate periodically that your pipelines are secure. There are many points where they are not secure." But Pemex says it cannot fix all those weak spots. Although the government keeps tight control over Pemex's budget, its ability to watch over Pemex's compliance with environmental and safety regulations is hindered by a tiny budget and weak laws. Profepa employs 150 industrial inspectors nationally, and Pemex has 2,000 installations to check, said Jose Ramon Ardavin Ituarte, the deputy prosecutor for industrial inspection. The pipeline from Nuevo Teapa to Poza Rica that burst last December had long been earmarked as a risk, but Pemex had promised to make improvements. "We knew there was a risk there, but we could not do anything," said Gerardo Alvarado Salinas, Profepa's director general for inspection of pollution sources. "The law does not allow us to take preventive action. I cannot close this pipeline because tomorrow there might be a spill. I have to wait until there is a spill." After an accident, environmental officials' tools are limited, because the law sets low fines. Since 2001, Pemex has paid less than $5 million in penalties. And prosecuting officials in connection with negligence is the responsibility of Mexico's Attorney General's Office, which has shown little appetite for taking on the company. In five years, the government has carried out one prosecution. The accident in Nanchital in April released a plume of ammonia gas, estimated at 60 liquid tons, killed six workers in the excavation, blackened trees and plants for hundreds of yards and forced the evacuation of at least 900 people. It took two days to retrieve bodies. Just up the road from the site, family members waited grimly. The dead men left behind wives and children with little or no money. Most had been working for the subcontractor, Reparaciones Navales de Petroquimica, for only a few months. On May 4, Pemex gave $74,500 to the families of the six men, although it said it might be ordered to pay more in the future. Pemex officials have tried to divert blame, saying the subcontractor cut into the wrong pipe after a supervising engineer left to check on the location of the right one. But family members asked why the workers had no protective suits. "They put him in there to work without any protection," said Victor Armas Mayo, 56, whose 30-year-old son, Daniel Armas, was killed. "I don't know how Pemex allowed this." [b]Mexican university to fund SSWM unit groundwater cleanup at state direction[/b] CARLSBAD, CA, Sept. 8, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Sub-Surface Waste Management of Delaware Inc. announced that its Mexico subsidiary company Environmental Tec International S.A. de C.V. (ETI) was named specifically in an official correspondence dated Sept. 1 and signed by Gov. Mario Marin Torres of the state of Puebla, Mexico, directing ETI strategic alliance and teaming partner the Zaragoza Graduate School of Studies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to provide immediate funding for engineering assessment and remediation of hydrocarbon discharges due to antiquated pipelines and storage tank farms. The recent Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) pipeline spills in Puebla have accounted for the contamination of hundreds of acres of productive farming land, rivers and lakes. Bruce Beattie, CEO of SSWM stated, "In the Governor's letter UNAM was also instructed to work with ETI to form an Emergency Response Center in Puebla coordinating with the State's Ministry of Environment to train specialized environmental Engineers and Technicians to respond to future spills of hydrocarbons in the State." [b]On Friday September 2, 2005 Governor Mario Marin Torres held a press conference covered by local and national media reprimanding Pemex, the state owned oil company, for the irresponsible management of their petroleum pipelines in Mexico, specifically in the states of Puebla, Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche. The following day, September 3, 2005, Mexico's leading newspaper -- The Reforma -- quoted the Governor as he stated that the three most recent spills of crude oil and gasoline have contaminated water reservoirs, farm lands and rivers, in some cases impacting up to hundreds of acres. Governor Mario Marin Torres has formed an alliance with the governors of Veracruz, Mr. Fidel Herrera, Tabasco, Mr. Manuel Andrade and Campeche, Mr. Jorge Carlos Hurtado Valdez, to ensure immediate restoration and remediation of the areas affected with Pemex's crude oil and gasoline releases, as these states have experienced hundreds of hydrocarbons spills during this year.[/b] Governor Mario Marin Torres has requested an immediate meeting with the President of Pemex, Mr. Luis Ramirez Corzo to obtain Pemex's immediate acceptance of these remediation activities and their financial support for the same. Environmental Tech International will be responsible for the majority of the restoration activities vis-a-vis these contaminated areas, i.e., farming lands, rivers and water reservoirs in Puebla working through Gov. Mario Marin Torres and his secretary for the Ministry of Environment. Sub-Surface Waste Management Inc. is a majority owned subsidiary of U.S. Microbics Inc. (www.bugsatwork.com) and provides comprehensive civil and environmental engineering project management services including specialists to design, permit, build and operate environmental waste clean-up treatment systems using conventional, biological and filtration technologies. SSWM is capitalizing on its patented technologies registered in Mexico with SEMARNAT a Federal regulatory agency overseeing environmental compliance nationwide. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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