Escal UGS, the company promoter of the warehouse of gas Castor, located off the coast of Vinarós (Castellón), has appealed to the Supreme Court the decision of the Government of the 31st of October— to dismantle permanently its facilities, according to the Official State Bulletin (BOE). The appeal submitted by the successful bidder of the platform, which caused hundreds of earthquakes in the area, was summoned on the 23rd of December.

The spokesperson of the platform for the defence of les terres del Sénia, which is contrary to the platform, Cristina Reverter, has described the appeal of "esperpéntico" because "it has been shown that the project is not viable". According to this representative, the administrative remedy can also be understood in key judicial, "because two of the directors of Escal UGS will be judged shortly by an environmental crime".

MORE INFORMATION

The judge processes for environmental crime to two directors and to the successful bidder of the Beaver, The Government recognizes that Castor was “unnecessary” and last close The store gas Castor not to re-open to the serious risk of more earthquakes

The agreement of the Council of Ministers last October enabled the Ministry for the Ecological Transition in order to comply with the agreement sealed, and abandonment of wells and ordering the stages to dismantle the facilities, to not be "neither feasible nor necessary in view of the consumption current and the future of natural gas" in Spain. The Executive appreciated that to maintain the facilities would only serve to postpone the definitive abandonment and prolong the costs of surveillance and maintenance of the platform.

The decision to leave temporarily inactive the store Castor was taken in 2014, after the earthquakes recorded in the area in September 2013. Enagás, responsible for managing the facilities, commissioned a study of structural geology, seismology, and geomechanics professionals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to see if reopening was safe.

This study concluded that, in the event of the resumption of operations of storage, could result in earthquakes of a magnitude significantly greater than that which prompted the decision to discontinue the facility, a risk that becomes unfeasible to use them in a new concession storage.

From April 2016, the wells that Beaver are sealed temporarily by using two plugs mechanical placed at different depths, whose useful life, estimated between two and four years, is about to be completed. From the date of its installation, perform periodic checks to certify that facilities are decommissioned in a safe manner.

The sealing and dismantling of the installations of Castor, which hibernaba tentatively from 2014 after the tremors that led to, has a cost of 260 million and would take five years, according to a report prepared by Enagás at the request of the Government in February 2018.

Castor was planned by the Government of the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as a store of strategic reserves of natural gas, with scenarios of shortages or increases wild prices as a result of, for example, crisis in the countries that Spain buys the gas, such as Algeria.

The Government of Mariano Rajoy, of the PP, ordered the cessation of operations after that, after starting to introduce the gas, desatase a string of earthquakes that caused damage in several municipalities of Castellón and Tarragona.

Date Of Update: 27 December 2019, 14:00