State's major challenge to ASMAA's 42,000 'anti-oil' petition

Environmental and anti-oil exploration association, ASMAA, leading the legal challenge to have Galp-ENI's Aljezur drilling licence revoked, is subject to a last-minute legal complication, arranged by the pro-oil government's extensive legal team.

ASMAA posted today, “In spite of the fact that ASMAA, in June 2016, February and December 2017, represented 42,295 public objections in the Portuguese Parliament against the granting of drilling licence to Galp-ENI, a pack of big legal guns employed by Galp-ENI, with the full support of the Portuguese government, is challenging the legitimacy of ASMAA’s Class Action, representing all those individuals and organisations that objected to the planned drilling in Aljezur.”

This opposition by the government to the opinion of its own public represents a significant spend of taxpayers’ money. Top lawyers have been hired to represent the Public Ministry, the Economy Ministry, the National Entity for the Energy Sector, the Ministry of the Sea, the Directorate General of Natural Resources for the Energy Sector, the Environment Ministry, the Directorate-General for Energy and Geology and the Portuguese Environment Agency.

Added to these entities are the actual oil companies, Eni Portugal, BV and Petróleos de Portugal - Petrogal, SA.

Judge Dr.ª. Maria Helena Paulino Costa Meirinho Filipe has decided, referencing a 2015 law, that the 42,295 people who signed ASMAA’s anti-oil petition ‘might have changed their minds.’

ASMAA is now must post an expensive advertisement in the national press (Público) to ask those who signed its record-breaking petition to opt back in by Friday 28th September.

Despite the overbearing weight of these government departments and the concession holder Galp-ENI, all putting ASMAA’s management and legal team under intense pressure, ASMAA’s Laurinda Seabra was positive,

“They have come out all cannons blasting - they now have four teams of lawyers attorneys against us. They argue that we can't have a class action because people that objected may have changed their minds, so now we have to publish an 'opt-in' for a class action.”

The basis of ASMAA’s legal action is to challenge the administrative path that led to the decision that no Environmental Impact Assessment would be needed before drilling and extracting oil or gas.

The opposition lawyers are scraping the barrel in their reasoning, as Seabra explained,

“They also argued that the reason we following the administrative route is because we may be ‘competitors for their concessions.’

This laughable reasoning that ‘ASMAA may be a competitor’ was enough for the Court to accept that, under a 2015 law, the original signatories have to be asked if they are still of the same mind.

Senior partners from two of Portugal's top legal firms have been hired by the State and are being paid with public funds to act against the public, “We were pleasantly surprised to see in their midst an ex-government minister. We are honoured by the fact that our legal actions deserve such highly respected opposition,” said Seabra, maintaining her sense of humour despite the daunting array of government forces and lawyer determined to thwart public opinion.

The ASMAA advert will be published in Público on Friday 21 September 2018.

“This is an early warning of what’s to come so that you can prepare yourself to act during the course of next week if you are really serious about not wanting any deep-offshore oil drilling in the Portuguese surrounding oceans,” reads a posting on the ASMAA website this morning.

More news on Friday.

See the ASMAA posting HERE

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