Oil giant Total denied on Monday it was responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in French history, the sinking of the oil tanker Erika in 1999 and the pollution caused when its cargo of oil washed ashore. Total's lawyer testified on the opening day of a trial in which 15 organisations and individuals are charged with responsibility for the spill that poured 20,000 tonnes of oil into the sea, polluted 400 km (250 miles) of coastline and caused damage valued at up to 1 billion euros (US$1.30 billion).

Lawyer Daniel Soulez-Lariviere told the court that Total, as the ship's charterer, was not responsible for its safety. The documents it received when chartering the 25-year-old vessel indicated it was fully seaworthy, he said. "A state of law means not changing the rules under the influence of the emotions of the day," he added.

The Erika, a rusting, Maltese-registered tanker, broke in two and sank in heavy seas in the Bay of Biscay some 70 km off the French coast on Dec. 12, 1999. Its 26 crew were winched to safety by helicopter and its fuel cargo started to sweep ashore almost two weeks later, killing between 60,000 and 300,000 birds -- the largest number of sea birds ever known to have been killed by an oil spill.

Presidential elections are due in France in April and May, and the case has assumed political overtones amid the increased focus on environmental issues. Lawyers, witnesses and plaintiffs were besieged by reporters and television cameramen as they entered the courtroom. Both the rightist government and Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal, in her role as head of the Poitou-Charentes coastal region in western France, are among 74 plaintiffs including local councils and environmental groups.

"We are at an absolute turning point today," said Francois Patsouris, vice-president of Poitou-Charentes regional council. "This case has to set a precedent. In the United States, there was the Exxon Valdez case. We have to have the same thing in Europe. Otherwise maritime law will not advance." The Erika case has revealed an opaque world of labyrinthine ship ownership and chartering arrangements that plaintiffs in the case say hindered effective safety regulation.

Monster trial
Total, the world's fourth largest oil group, is accused of marine pollution, deliberately failing to take measures to prevent the pollution and complicity in endangering human lives. The company denies the charges. Having spent 200 million euros on the cleanup operation, Total faces penalties ranging from tens of thousands of euros in fines to many millions of euros in damages if found guilty.

The trial is expected to last until June and is the first on such a scale, in which a multinational faces charges of maritime pollution in France, with some 90 lawyers sifting through 189 volumes of evidence. Besides Total and two of its subsidiaries, the ship's Indian captain, its management company, four French maritime officials and the Italian maritime certification company RINA, which classified the ship as safe, are also on trial.

Some 69 witnesses and interpreters in Italian, English and Hindi will take part in the proceedings in the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris. Total said it chartered the Erika in good faith and only found out that its internal structures were corroded as a result of an examination of the vessel after it sank.

Critics, including environmental group Friends of the Earth, a plaintiff in the trial, say Total took cynical risks with the ship to meet a tight contract deadline. They want international maritime law to be tightened to minimise risks to the environment.
(Por James Mackenzie, Planet Ark, 13/02/2007)