The Castellón Court has acquitted Recaredo del Potro and José Luis Martínez Dalmau, the two former directors of the Escal company, which was awarded the development of the largest underground gas warehouse to be implemented in Spain, considering that, at all times, they complied current regulations on environmental protection and that, in no case was there a serious danger. Furthermore, the ruling indicates that, far from the accusations of not reacting and hiding information about the seismic movements that occurred on the north coast of Castellón, “they did not remain impassive in the face of the increase in seismicity, but on the contrary they were adopting measures corrective measures as they became aware of the increase in seismicity caused by their business activity ”. The ruling even praises the attitude of the managers who “proceeded to analyze in detail the evolution of the induced seismicity” and proceeded to reduce the volume of gas injections “in addition to informing the authorities of said increase in seismicity.”
The court points out that there is no evidence that both defendants sought to cause any kind of damage, “and it is not possible to appreciate an indifference of these defendants in the face of the serious risk that these seismic events would cause physical or material damage that was ultimately not suffered by the citizens residing in Vinaròs and towns near the Castor natural gas storage facility ”.
Regarding the almost a thousand seismic movements that were recorded on the north coast of Castellón and south of Tarragona and of which a multitude of reports were presented during the trial, the court admits the spatio-temporal correlation “between the seismic events produced in the surrounding of the warehouse and the gas injection operations in the aforementioned deposit ”but maintains that“ the greater seismicity induced by the gas injection is not known to have caused personal or material damage to the citizens of the towns near the gas warehouse ”. Furthermore, according to the ruling, “said higher seismicity (…) could have resulted from the reactivation of smaller pre-existing uncharted and unknown faults located a few kilometers from the deposit,” so its reaction could not be predicted. In addition, it dictates that “it is unknown how the observed seismicity occurred and, therefore, it is also unknown how the gas injection could have influenced this seismicity.”
During the trial, both the defenses of the two former directors, as well as that of the company – which also sat on the bench as a defendant and which, likewise, has been acquitted – maintained that Escal (66.7% owned by ACS , by Florentino Pérez) acted “in a responsible, prudent and adequate manner”, that no more diligence could have been asked of them, that the company had audits that confirmed that security standards and protocols were being met.
More than a hundred witnesses affected by the seismic movements united in the Aplaca platform also passed through the trial, asking for compensation for the “anxiety, anguish, uncertainty and anxiety” suffered by the earthquakes, the largest of which was 4 , 2 points on the Ritcher scale.
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