Dear Editor,
I read with horror your report on the first offshore oil well due to start drilling in October. How dare they? The issue is something that no one living in the Algarve wants. Every mayor has signalled ‘official rejection’, along with environmental groups, community groups, etc etc.
Surely there must be some form of European law protecting citizens from the corruption, greed and stupidity of their politicians? And I thought I read somewhere that this new government was only allowing contracts to stay in place in order to learn if oil existed… Another convenient bending of the truth, I suppose!
Living here, in our little bubble, we often fail to see what is going on elsewhere, or to learn from it.
Last week, for example, the Italian Riviera was under threat from an oil spill. Thousands of tons of crude were thought to be enroute for Mediterranean beaches. The threat appears now to have dissipated, but do we really want to hear the next scare story mention the Algarve? There must be more that we can do to stop this…
Janet Freeman, Marmelete
Editor’s note: Anti-oil group ASMAA is sending out petition forms to every household in the Algarve next month, in a bid to marshall this kind of opposition and raise the issue (again) in parliament.
