Weekly Report - 25 June 2009 (WR-09-25)

MEXICO | Missing island. On 23 June a scientific expedition officially informed the lower chamber that it could not find Bermeja Island. Bermeja Island was crucial to Mexico's ownership claim to potentially oil-rich parts of the Gulf of Mexico. The island would have expanded its maritime boundary by 55km and thus given it rights over deep waters (Hoyo de la Dona Oeste) which may hold an estimated US$300bn worth of oil. Rights to this area are now likely to go to the US.
Bermeja Island originally appeared on charts dating from 16th and 17th centuries and was supposed to lie approximately at latitude 22 º North and longitude 91 º West. In November 2008, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Unam) was commissioned by the marine committee of the chamber of deputies to find the island. Unam searched historical records and sent a research ship to the presumed location but found nothing, even using ultrasound techniques which could have detected an island which existed 300 years ago but had since been submerged. In 1820 two expeditions to the presumed location also failed to find the island.