Argentina’s National Ombudsman has asked the country’s Supreme Court to order Spain’s Repsol YPF, Brazil’s Petrobras and 15 other companies to clean up the Neuquén oilfields, traditionally one of Argentina’s most productive oil- and natural-gas-producing areas. Filed in support of a landholders’ suit against the oil companies, the petition resembles one that preceded a Supreme Court order last year that polluters plan a cleanup of the notoriously polluted Riachuelo River in Buenos Aires. (See “Cleanup, at last, for Argentina’s Riachuelo River?”—EcoAméricas, July ’06, and “Authority created to lead Riachuelo cleanup”—EcoAméricas, Jan. ’07.) But it could set the stage for the cleanup of areas beyond the Neuquén oil basin, which embraces two-thirds of the Patagonian province of Neuquén as well as... [Log in to read more]