Weekly Report - 22 March 2012 (WR-12-12)

In an unprecedented move, the federal public ministry has filed criminal charges against 17 workers from the US companies Chevron and Transocean for an oil spill in the Campos basin, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, in November 2011. Federal prosecutors said that the 17, which include Chevron’s local boss George Buck, could face a jail sentence of up to 21 years each for presiding over a “contamination time bomb”. Chevron rejected the charges – for environmental crimes and damage to public patrimony – as “outrageous and without merit”. The case has put the wind up the entire industry, which is operating in unchartered territory in Brazil’s offshore ultra-deep Atlantic waters.