The continuation of ASMAA’s oil and gas exploration awareness campaign hangs in the balance, as campaign funds are now totally depleted. No more funds.

ASMAA’s management is frustrated with the total lack of support from the more than 8000 non-paying association members, the more than 5000 online petition signatories, and the thousands of businesses spread throughout the Algarve that the oil and gas exploration will negatively impact in the future.

ALMARGEM – the Asssociation for the Defense of the Algarve’s Cultural and Environmental Heritage - has sent an official request to the Minister for the Environment demanding an environmental impact assessment be carried out covering the widespread hydrocarbon exploration activity along the Algarve’s coastline.

In early July the president of the Spanish oil company Repsol said, after meeting the President of the Portuguese Republic, that his company will begin in earnest drilling and exploring for hydrocarbons off the Algarve coast in 2015.

"The government will authorise oil or gas drilling off the Algarve by the Spanish Repsol consortium." As a statement, it benefits from brevity and clarity.

"Repsol is leading a consortium with a concession off the Algarve, with the expectation that in fulfillment of contractual obligations it soon will be drilling. Subsequently, the consortium may choose to proceed to the exploitation phase with the Government's permission," according to a statement today from the office of the Secretary of State for Energy.

Eco-campaigners and guardians of Portugal’s natural heritage, Quercus, has called for a full Environmental Impact Study covering oil and gas drilling off Portugal's coastline, specifically the Algarve's.

A very concerned National Association for Nature Conservation – Quercus - points out that the oil companies’ activities "may endanger the natural heritage and the future of Algarve tourism” as drilling is planned for eight kilometres off the Algarve’s coast and it is due to start soon.

ARE YOU READY TO LOOSE IT ALL?

For the past 2 years we have been warning you.

Many didn’t believe that drilling for gas and oil offshore in the Algarve would ever happen.

After all there’s been talk on and off for past 10 years and nothing happened till now.

Portugal’s Hydrographic Institute has anchored a hi-tech buoy 40 nautical miles due south of Faro.

The Navy’s oceanographic research vessel D. Carlos I sailed to the Algarve last week to anchor the Hydrographic Institute’s multi-use floating platform.

An oil spill scenario was created this morning by Portugal’s Maritime Authority at the mouth of the River Gilão in Tavira and was intended to asess the response to an accidental oil spill from an imagined collision between two ships sailing in opposite directions.

The simulation was started as a flood tide caused an out of control ship to beach in the cove next to the hotel Vila Gale Albacora which then leaked oil which spread into the Ria Formosa protected natural area.

First of all, I want to personally thank all of you that have signed the petition against the exploration of gas and oil in the Algarve, and a very big thank you to the few that have donated in the past 6 months. I am just sad that the majority has failed to even assist with basic things such as just collecting more signatures, and telling people near them of the threat facing all of us.