"PERU TAXPAYERS TO PAY US$1.5 BILLION FOR REMEDIATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE LEFT BY PLUSPETROL", 11 February 2023

...A report by the National Fund for State Protected Natural Areas (PROFONANPE) estimates that the Peruvian state, or rather the Peruvian taxpayer, will have to pay more than 5 billion soles to remedy environmental damage in Block 192 of the Peruvian Amazon abandoned by the Netherlands-based Argentine oil company Pluspetrol.

According to the indigenous platform PUINAMUDT, this amount exceeds the amount paid by Shell to remedy the environmental damages generated by 40 years of oil exploitation in Nigeria.

Block 192 was operated by the subsidiary Pluspetrol Norte S.A., currently in voluntary liquidation. Pluspetrol abandoned the block in 2015 after failing to achieve an extension to its contract with state agency Perupetro. The company presented three successive plans for environmental remediation, all of which were rejected by Perupetro and the state environmental agency OEFA.

In its most recent plan, presented in 2021, the company proposed to pay only a little more than 5 million dollars for remediation. Peruvian regulations provide for the state to assume responsibility for the design and implementation of environmental remediation in circumstances where a company’s plan has been rejected twice...