Galapagos Park Seeks $10 Million From Markel for Tanker Spill
Megan Murphy, Bloomberg: The Galapagos Islands national park service has filed a lawsuit in London to recover more than $10 million in damages for a 2001 oil spill that threatened the archipelago’s famed ecosystem.
Parque Nacional Galapagos claims that Markel Corp., an insurer of a tanker that leaked almost 200,000 gallons of fuel off the island of San Cristobal, has failed to pay any of the compensation awarded by an Ecuadorian court four years ago.
The Galapagos, located about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) west of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean, are famous for inspiring Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The chain of volcanic islands is home to a number of species, such as the marine iguana and the lava gull, that can’t be found anywhere else on the planet.
The Supreme Court of Guayaguil, Ecuador, ordered a U.K. unit of Markel to pay the park service $10,060,000 in damages and fees in October 2002. Parque Nacional Galapagos is now asking the High Court in London to enforce that judgment, plus interest, according to a claim form filed on July 28.
Markel, based in Richmond, Virginia, declined to comment on the lawsuit. The company’s shares have risen more than 17 percent this year, closing at $373.89 yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Oil Slicks
The oil spill began four days after the tanker “Jessica'’ ran aground on Jan. 16, 2001, bound for a fuel station on the Galapagan island of Baltra, according to a report on the incident published by a European Commission task force.
Leaks from the vessel, which was carrying around 160,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 80,000 gallons of fuel oil at the time, scattered oil slicks across more than 1,000 square kilometers, according to that report.
Researchers investigating the environmental impact of the spill have reached varying conclusions. The Charles Darwin Foundation, a not-for-profit conservation group based in the Galapagos, didn’t detect a “significant'’ impact on the islands’ marine vertebrate population, such as iguanas and California sea lions, according a report published a year after the spill.
A separate group of scientists, led by Princeton University’s Martin Wikelski, found that more than 60 percent, or 15,000, of the marine iguanas recorded on the island of Santa Fe died a year after Jessica’s grounding, according to a paper published in the U.K. science journal Nature in 2002.
More than 60,000 tourists visit the Galapagos Islands annually, according to the Charles Darwin Foundation.
