Brazil seeking $10 bn from Chevron
for oil spill
Brazilian federal prosecutors are seeking 20 billion reais
(some $10 billion) in damages from US oil supermajor Chevron and Swiss-based
Transocean for an oil spill that began in early November.
The prosecutor's office in the southeastern city of Campos,
Rio de Janeiro state, filed a civil suit Wednesday in which it also requested a
court injunction to halt the companies' operations and a daily fine of 500
million reais ($266.8 million) in case of non-compliance, the official Agencia
Brasil news agency said.
In a statement, federal prosecutor Eduardo Santos Oliveira
said Chevron and Transocean, the drilling contractor at the offshore well where
the accident occurred, were unable to contain the spill and reduce its impact
and used an 'inefficient' technique in their clean-up efforts.
Separately, a court granted a request by the Fishermen's
Federation of Rio de Janeiro for an independent expert evaluation of the oil
spill's potential damage to fishing production in the region, where some 10,000
people ply that trade.
The spill began Nov 8 at an appraisal well in the offshore
Campos basin due to an 'unexpected pressure spike or 'kick'' during 'drilling
toward a targeted reservoir', Chevron said in its preliminary assessment of the
incident.
The San Ramon, California-based company estimates that a
total of 2,400 barrels of crude leaked from the well, although Rio de Janeiro
state officials say close to 15,000 barrels were spilled.
The company dispersed or recovered the majority of the
crude that rose to the surface and the oil sheen, located some 120 km off the
coast of Rio de Janeiro state, has almost completely dissipated.
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