spill

April 6 (UPI) — Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, on Monday accused some television networks of harming hotel and restaurant businesses in the state of Veracruz through negative coverage of a hydrocarbon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

During her morning press conference, Sheinbaum called for direct dialogue between media outlets and business owners. She said the way the issue has been reported has had economic impacts on sectors that depend on tourism along the coastal region.

“It would be very good for business owners in Veracruz’s tourism sector to speak directly with the television network. Mexicans have the right to information, we have the right to the truth. There may be disagreements with the government, there may be political differences with the government. But something very different is the permanent attack that harms third parties,” the president said.

Civil organizations, academics and local residents have reported that hydrocarbon contamination is already affecting nearly 900 kilometers of coastline, from Campeche to Tamaulipas, and that the situation remains out of control.

At the same time, the National Action Party said the authorities’ response has been insufficient and warned that the damage is worsening in communities that depend on fishing and tourism, especially during the Holy Week season, as it coincides with the start of sea turtle nesting. According to the party, this context turns the crisis into a growing social emergency.

Sheinbaum added that the coverage affects not only the federal administration but also workers in the service sector.

“Not only the government of Mexico, but also third parties, which are precisely restaurant owners, hotel owners and all the people who work in services in Veracruz and, in general, throughout the Gulf of Mexico,” she said.

The hydrocarbon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has raised concerns about its environmental effects and its impact on tourism in the region. Sheinbaum linked visitor flows to sea conditions and said occupancy levels have remained high.

“Fortunately, fewer and fewer people are watching them, because otherwise we would not have had the level of occupancy that Veracruz had,” she said.

She added that the country’s main tourist destinations are reporting occupancy rates close to 80%.

The president said Tourism Secretary Josefina Rodríguez Zamora will present a report on hotel occupancy after the Holy Week and Easter holiday period.

“We are waiting until next Monday for Josefina, the secretary of Tourism, to inform us about Holy Week and Easter week. She will give us a general report on hotel occupancy in different locations,” she said.

Sheinbaum also announced a meeting for Tuesday with an interdisciplinary group that will analyze the origin of the spill and containment actions. The team will include Petróleos Mexicanos, the state oil company known as Pemex; the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources; and specialists from academic institutions focused on studying the Gulf of Mexico.

“Regarding the spill, tomorrow I have a meeting with the interdisciplinary group we formed, which includes Pemex, the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources, and researchers from different institutes in the country that are specifically dedicated to analyzing the Gulf, so they can give me a comprehensive review of the causes of the spill,” she said.

The meeting aims to establish a permanent environmental monitoring system with participation from universities and research centers to track conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.

MEXICO CITY — Environmentalist groups accused Mexico’s government of lying about the source of a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, something authorities promptly denied.

The spill of off the coast of the southern state of Veracruz has spread more than 373 miles and into seven nature reserves. Turtles and other marine life have been found on sea shores coated in oil, and fishermen have been unable to work in waters they have fished for decades.

Mexico’s government reported that 800 tons of hydrocarbon-laden waste have spilled into the ocean. The government said the spill started in March and the sources were a ship anchored off the coastal state of Veracruz and two sites from which oil naturally flows.

On Monday, a group of 17 organizations — including Greenpeace Mexico, the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking and the Mexican Center for Environmental Rights, or CEMDA — contradicted that claim and said that satellite images they captured show the root of the spill was actually a pipeline from Mexico’s state-run oil company, Pemex, and that a large oil slick appeared in early February.

“All this lack of information is causing massive economic and environmental damage. So far no one has been held accountable,” Margarita Campuzano, spokesperson for CEMDA, said Tuesday.

Images from February circulated by the activists match images obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday through Copernicus, the European climate agency. The photos show a boat floating over a sea clouded with what the groups say is oil, which appears to be streaming out of a platform.

The groups said that the boat in the images is Árbol Grande, which specializes in pipeline repair — implying that the government knew about the spill before it had reported it and “hid it.”

Pemex called the information and images circulated by the groups “inaccurate” and said the Árbol Grande boat traverses the Gulf of Mexico continually, “carrying out preventive inspections of platforms and specialized spill response operations.”

Campuzano called for greater transparency and more aggressive investigations by authorities.

“They’re trying to dilute their responsibility when technology makes it very easy to know where this occurred and who is responsible,” she said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday denied the accusations during her morning press briefing and said that up until now, “no leak has been reported” in state oil infrastructure and that such natural seeps in the Gulf have happened in the past.

She said the government was investigating with scientists whether the spill was “due to these natural seeps in the area, which have been reported on many occasions and are well-documented in scientific literature, or a leak from one of the facilities.”

Sheinbaum said that it was more probable that the spill came from the natural seeps, and added that teams were hard at work cleaning up the spill and mitigating the effects.

While government officials recognized the impacts on turtles, birds and fish, and the spread to protected ecosystems, they also insisted that it had not caused “severe environmental damage.”

The accusations come as environmental groups in the United States have also raised alarm after the Trump administration exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act, saying environmentalists’ lawsuits threatened to hobble domestic energy supplies during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Critics said the move could harm marine life and also doom a rare whale species.

Janetsky writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Teresa de Miguel in Mexico City contributed to this report.

March 25 (UPI) — Environmental organization Oceana has accused the Mexican government of maintaining an opaque response to an oil spill that has affected at least 390 miles of coastline in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil has largely impacted the southern part of Veracruz state and the northern part of Tabasco state since early March, with dozens of contaminated sites still not receiving attention.

The spill has lasted nearly three weeks without an identified cause or confirmed responsible parties, affects the southwestern Gulf of Mexico reef corridor, a key ecological area that stretches along the coast between both states.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said the Office of the Attorney General is investigating, with support from environmental and energy agencies, while an interdisciplinary team analyzes the causel.

Sheinbaum stated that the spill originated from a private vessel, not state-owned oil company Pemex.

Veracruz Gov. Rocío Nahle said she will meet with officials from Petroleos Mexicanos to evaluate the installation of containment barriers in coastal areas following requests from fishermen.

Nahle said cleanup efforts are intensifying and that specialized mesh barriers are being installed at strategic points along the coastline to contain residues, with plans to expand the work depending on marine current movements.

Oceana warned that the situation constitutes a “crisis of transparency and accountability,” noting that official information has been insufficient and contradictory compared to the scale of damage reported by coastal communities.

Greenpeace Mexico released an interactive map with real-time reports on the expansion of the spill, including citizen records of thick residues and their impact on wildlife and coastal ecosystems.

However, Veracruz governor downplayed the impact, saying in interviews that it involves “traces” or small “drops” of oil on beaches and asserting that reports of dead wildlife were false — an assessment that contrasts with reports from communities and environmental organizations.

Oceana called on the government to establish “transparent, agile and binding” interagency coordination mechanisms and to adopt structural measures to prevent the Gulf from facing another environmental crisis without responsible parties or clear information.

“The Gulf of Mexico and its communities cannot continue to be treated as an environmental sacrifice zone,” Terrazas said.