“ESG and legal adviser, David Dumas QC, of Hassan’s Law Firm, will be travelling to Barcelona next week to meet with public health specialist, Professor Benach, author of the Atlas of Mortality report, to learn more about his ongoing work and new health data from the Campo area. The team from Gibraltar will also be meeting with an Environmental Law Firm specialising in European Environmental Law to discuss issues of Bay pollution, especially at a cross border level.

Audit on Refinery:

’The team will have with them copies of a dossier on the CEPSA Oil Refinery recently submitted to Govt and political parties in Gibraltar as well as to the local media, with further copies being sent to La Junta and NGO’s in Spain. The dossier is based on an audit commissioned by La Junta in 2006, after an especially high level of heavy polluting incidents at the plant, which was finally completed in 2008. The ESG, through its legal advisers, were able to acquire a copy in the summer of 2009.

The audit has been carefully analysed by ESG’s Technical advisers and an interpretation of the audit completed. ESG conclusions are that the Oil Refinery and Petrochemical Complex fall far short of meeting its IPPC permit obligations and calls for urgency in seeing various improvements through at the plant to minimise avoidable pollution. Copies of the ESG paper and audit itself as well as other important supporting documents will be made available for download from our website soon and will also be released to the media.

A full report on the Barcelona visit will be published on the groups return.”