| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
Mexico Not Expecting Much Damage Yet From BP Oil Spill
 Laurence Iliff - Dow Jones Newswires
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June 26, 2010
 |  | President Felipe Calderon received an action plan from the Ministry of the Navy during a visit to the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz this week. |  | | |
Mexico City - Mexico is preparing for the arrival of oil floating in from the leaking underwater BP well in the Gulf, but doesn't expect much damage unless a hurricane changes the direction of the oil slick or a seasonal shift in water currents brings tar balls to Mexican beaches.
The chief executive of state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, Juan Jose Suarez Coppel, told legislators that water currents in the Gulf appear to be keeping the oil spill away from Mexico.
"The probability that the oil would move toward Mexican coasts is low, and if that were to happen, we would expect it to be in the form of tar balls or highly emulsified oil trails, which could happen in the next five to seven months," Suarez said during testimony Thursday.
"Mexico is prepared to respond under the worst-case scenario," he added, since Pemex has the oil booms and personnel necessary, and the support of the Navy.
President Felipe Calderon received an action plan from the Ministry of the Navy during a visit to the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz this week.
The president's office said the preparations were "for the purpose of facing potential effects and risks that this ecological disaster can present to Mexican coasts."
The Navy plans include regular contact with the U.S. Coast Guard, the possibility of activating a U.S.-Mexico joint contingency operation, and "reconnaissance flights off the Yucatan Peninsula where, up until now, we have not found any signs of oil patches or residues."
The president's office said that hurricane season, which began June 1, presents a complex threat since stormy waters would make it difficult to predict where a crude oil slick might move and "such a slick could cover a much larger area and be complicated to control given its fragmentation."
What could also cause a landing of BP crude on Mexican shores is the shifting of the current in the Gulf of Mexico from north to south beginning in October.
That, the president's office said, could push oil globs from the outflow of the Mississippi River toward the Gulf Coast states of Veracruz and Tabasco, part of Mexico's oil producing region.
The Environmental Ministry said in a recent statement that the worst case scenario would be for the arrival of oil in Mexican waters by November or December.
The Mexican government "is considering asking BP for about $20 million" in a first phase of actions to monitor possible damage to local ecosystems.
The money would be used to buy monitoring equipment, hire personnel and train them, the ministry said.
Particularly worrisome, it said, would be the threat of an oil slick reaching the turtle breeding areas of Nueva Playa in Tamaulipas, "since that could end 40 years of work our country has taken in the turtle's recuperation" after its numbers had dwindled.
The BP gusher comes 30 years after the large spill caused by the Ixtoc 1 exploratory rig under contract by Pemex. That spill in the southern Gulf, which gushed for several months, sent oil slicks northward and eventually onto the U.S. Gulf coast, despite months of attempts to prevent it from reaching shore.
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