| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
President Calderón Monitors Oil Spill
 Suzanne Stephens Waller - Presidencia de la República
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June 24, 2010
The Presidency reports that President Felipe Calderón has closely monitored the development of the oil spill on the American side of the Gulf of Mexico, reported as a result of the explosion and sinking of British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.
Earlier today, during his working tour of the state of Veracruz, the Mexican president supervised the work and measures carried out in recent weeks by the Secretariats of the Navy and the Environment and Natural Resources to deal with the potential effects and risks this ecological disaster may pose for Mexico's coasts.
Naval specialists showed the President the strategy this Secretariat has implemented in conjunction with other Federal departments, whose main actions are:
• The implementation of the National Contingency Plan and the Joint Contingency Plan between Mexico and the United States.
• Constant communication with the US Coast Guard, surveillance of the coastal and maritime zone and water quality monitoring.
• Following up the spill through models simulating the trajectory and spread of the oil spill.
• Weekly report to the governors of the coastal states of the Gulf of Mexico (Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche and Yucatán on the monitoring of the trajectory and the evaluation of the slick.
• Reconnaissance flights off the Yucatán Peninsula, where no oil slicks or residues have been detected yet.
The experts told President Calderón that naval personnel are performing simulations in Ensenada, Baja California, and Tampico, Tamaulipas, the best-trained cities in this respect, which form part of the joint response teams of the Binational Mexico-United States Plan. In this part, they pointed out that they were congratulated by the US Coast Guard, since their performance exceeded the expectations of the simulatio.
This set of actions, explained the specialists, will permit the timely detection of the oil slicks threatening Mexico’s shores and the implementation of the necessary preventive and corrective actions. They added that in conjunction with the Federal offices involved and the state governments of the coastal zone of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mexican Navy will be ready to cope with the two potential risks related to the advance of the oil slick.
The first is that during the fall-winter season, the oil slick will drift toward the coasts of Tamaulipas in the shape of lumps, soft masses and strings, commonly known as “sludge.” This is because, during the period from October to February, the pattern of the Gulf Current changes direction: from North to South, from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the border between Tabasco and Veracruz.
The second risk factor is the hurricane season, which begins on June 1 in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. During a hurricane, it would be extremely difficult to predict how far the oil slick would spread. It could also cover a much larger area, while its fragmentation would make it more difficult to control.
Lastly, employees at the Secretariat of the Environment told the President that so far there have been no reports of the species affected and that the monitoring will continue permanently until all risks have been eliminated.
The President was accompanied by Secretaries of the Interior, Fernando Gómez Mont; Foreign Affairs, Patricia Espinosa Cantellano; National Defense, Guillermo Galván Galván; the Navy, Mariano Francisco Saynez Mendoza; Public Security, Genaro García Luna, Governor of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera and his wife, Margarita Zavala, among other federal and local authorities from Veracruz.
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