- Mongabay Latam and Data Crítica examined and compared official data of oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, including satellite images by scientists studying oil spills and evidence compiled by fishing communities. Their analysis found that most oil spills are not reported.
- Occasionally, even the spills that are reported are played down. The volume of the Ek’ Balam oil spill in 2023 — the most serious spill in Mexico in recent years — was under-reported by 10 to 200 times, according to calculations performed by scientists using satellite images of the disaster.
- Between January 2018 and July 2024, the government of Mexico initiated 48 sanctioning processes against oil companies, but fines were only imposed in fewer than half of those cases. And only eight of those fines have been paid.
- Fishers are demanding oil companies release actual data and take responsibility and the government take action to protect their environment and livelihood.
One morning in early April 2024, Elías Naal Hernández set out with his fishing net to try his luck in the waters of Isla Aguada, off the coast of southeastern Mexico. The town sits between the Gulf of Mexico and the Laguna de Términos, the country’s largest coastal lagoon. Until he arrived, the fisherman could not begin to imagine the devastating scene he would face that morning at the sea.
“It was an enormous slick: miles and miles of oil. We would catch it in water buckets and they would fill up because of how much there was,” said Hernández. The only thing he caught that day — by the bucketful — was oil.
The spill was also detected via satellite imagery by scientists who have spent years studying oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. Their satellite images show evidence of potential oil slicks beginning March 7, 2024. The oil slicks appeared to originate near infrastructure owned by Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), a Mexican state-owned company responsible for extracting oil from the Gulf of Mexico. Pemex provides 80% of the nation’s crude oil.
Although Pemex was legally required to report the oil spill, the company did not do so. Naal Hernández said that when he went public with the spill, Pemex downplayed the event, arguing that it was a natural release of oil. This response is heard all too often by fishers who report spills, which, according to Naal Hernández, do not have the characteristics of a natural event.
When Naal Hernández started fishing 38 years ago, it was typical for sierra fish, wahoo (Acanthocybium solandri), blackspot seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo), hake, red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus), tuna, tilapia and catfish to swim very close to the coast. Some 300 aquatic species live in the estuary and almost 80 of them are now endangered, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology. For decades, fishing nets would occasionally fill with pink shrimp. Fishers could see bottlenose dolphins, loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and the critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempii).
But now, more and more often, what Naal Hernández has found when fishing is a sea polluted by spills from oil wells. In 2024, there were 88 wells more than there were six years prior, for a total of more than 2,000 wells.
A team of researchers from Mongabay Latam and Data Crítica requested industry reports on oil spills sent to the Mexican government. The goal was to further understand the magnitude of these incidents by identifying their characteristics and effects in the Gulf of Mexico. The researchers compared this information with data shared by scientists from Mexico’s College of the Southern Border (ECOSUR) and the Oceanology Research Institute at the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur (UABCS). Together, these scientists have analyzed more than 3,000 satellite images captured between 2018 and 2024. They published an academic investigation on the issue in October 2024.
The findings are alarming: Official reports from Mexico’s Agency for Safety, Energy, and Environment (ASEA) regarding oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico show just a small fraction of what is truly happening in this area. The area is home to more than 15,000 species of birds, fish and mollusks of both ecological and commercial value, which help maintain the livelihoods of about 80,000 fishers — like Naal Hernández — in the area.
Scientists detected unnatural oil slicks in the sea 74 months of the 79 months (6.5 years) analyzed. However, ASEA has only recorded spills in 30 months. In other words, the scientists detected spills in more than twice as many months as Mexico’s environmental authority.
“We are definitely in a state of agony, barely surviving,” said Baudelio Cruz, who has been a fisherman in the city of Campeche for seven years and has been watching the ecosystem deteriorate for decades. “There is very little fishing left,” added Cruz, urging the Mexican government to pay more attention to the fishers.
“They are not natural releases of oil”
When Naal Hernández turned to representatives from Pemex with a handful of sargassum soaked in crude oil as evidence, officials gave him the same argument as always: that the oil slicks he could see for miles and miles were “chapopoteras,” or natural releases of oil. However, according to Naal Hernández, they did not support that claim with any evidence.
Moreover, the analysis conducted by scientists from ECOSUR, the UABCS, the Gulf of Mexico Research Consortium (CIGoM) and the Engineering Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) provides evidence that supports the fishers’ claim that the oil they found between March and April 2024 did not correspond to a natural release of oil. For one thing, the oil was found too far from the known natural source of oil in the area. Also, the spatial characteristics of the oil slick did not correspond to a natural release, according to the scientists’ paper in 2024.
The characteristics of a natural release of oil versus a spill have been identified in the thousands of photos included in the database prepared for this investigation.
“We are very certain when we detect oil on the surface of the sea. We have dozens of photos and videos that have helped us with validation,” said Abigail Uribe, a specialist from the UABCS who analyzed these satellite images with researchers from ECOSUR.
Oil that is released naturally, for example, does not travel farther than a few miles. It also spreads into a less extensive oil slick made up of long, thin claw-shaped threads. However, oil spills have different characteristics: This oil is “more concentrated and covers much larger spaces,” according to the experts.
After years of studying the Gulf of Mexico, scientists and fishers know the locations that naturally release oil. According to Uribe, if a fisher finds oil, it is most likely the result of a spill, since these natural spots are very small and close to platforms that are off limits.
“We know that these are not natural releases of oil,” said Wilbert Cosmopulos López, a fisher for 20 years and president of the Federation of Cooperative Industrial Societies of Cárdenas in the Mexican state of Tabasco. “Facing the coast of Magallanes, where we have the fishery, [one can] get on a boat and notice the crude oil due to the odor … Then, [one can] see a shiny, oily tone in the reflection of the water. Behind that, lumps and sheets of oil are floating. The farther you go toward the oil slick, you see bigger sheets of oil. So, we start to take photos and evidence.”
Fishers’ contributions are key to strengthening the data collected via satellite image analysis. Their knowledge about the behavior of species, the direction of currents, reef locations, or even any oil-covered animals, for example, is vital.
“[It’s] another source of reliable information about what is happening in a landscape where there are few participants. In a country like Mexico, with limited economic resources to carry out effective monitoring, these other sources of information … become indispensable,” said Alejandro Espinoza Tenorio, a researcher from ECOSUR.
For that reason, the scientists from ECOSUR, the Oceanology Research Institute at the UABCS and other institutions, such as Higher Technological Institute of Centla (in the state of Tabasco) and the UNAM, are collaborating with the fishers in an alliance called Pesca y Petróleo 2.0, or Fishing and Oil 2.0.
The information analyzed by the scientists — and verified, in part, by the fishers — calls into question the government’s data. For example, between January and July 2024, no companies reported any spills in the Gulf of Mexico to authorities, but during each of those months, the researchers captured evidence of oil slicks that did not correspond to natural releases of oil.
The systematic minimization of spills does not only occur because they go unreported by companies, which violates regulations, but also because the quantities of spilled oil are underestimated. For example, the data provided by ASEA reveal that the June 2023 Ek’ Balam spill — one of the most serious in the country’s recent history — was initially reported to be 38 cubic meters (about 1,342 cubic feet) in volume. This is equivalent to 690 Toyota Corolla fuel tanks. The scientists from UABCS consider this impossible due to the size and the displacement of the oil slick.
“Assuming conservative estimations, leaving out the most controversial areas and only considering the areas of the spill where we observed pretty concentrated oil, we have estimates of between 10 and 200 times the reported volume,” said Uribe.
Every time the researchers from UABCS and ECOSUR identify a spill, they send a report to the authorities. However, in response to a request for information, ASEA indicated that it had not systematized any scientific reports since the law does not consider these reports legitimate. The same is true of any complaints or evidence provided by the fishers. The government only considers the oil companies’ self-reporting.
Locals and specialists agree that the greatest impact on the ecosystem, and on the millions of Mexican people who depend on fishing in the gulf, does not only come from large oil spills such as the Ek’ Balam spill. Instead, the greatest impact is the accumulation of decades of leaks and smaller chronic spills. Most of these smaller spills are never reported, much less penalized.
Only eight fines paid over six years
For the Mexican Marine Corps to activate an oil spill contingency protocol — a document that clearly establishes routes for the containment and remediation of a spill — oil companies must first report a spill. If this is not done, nobody reaches the affected area. For this reason, nothing was done in an attempt to stop the oil spill that Naal Hernández saw in early 2024.
“Right now, I am more or less dedicating myself to fighting [for] environmentalism, because they are causing harm to us. People come at all hours of the night: ‘We saw this spill, this happened here, it’s 7 miles away.’ They talk to me about Yucatán, [saying] that the spill is coming from underneath, that the platforms have leaks and that [the oil] is reaching the coasts of Campeche and Yucatán through the currents,” said Naal Hernández, who also serves as the president of the United Federation for Isla Aguada, Campeche.
Scientists like Abigail Uribe warn that companies only seem to report the most scandalous spills: those that affect coasts. The rest go unnoticed, and the Mexican population is never made aware of them, unless fishers report them.
According to Mexico’s Hydrocarbons Law, extractive companies are responsible for waste and spills, and they must notify the country’s Ministry of Energy, the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH in Spanish) and ASEA in the event of any disaster. The companies must also apply any contingency plans, emergency measures and containment actions.
“We believe that the conflict [lies in the fact] that the [company] is judge and party [simultaneously],” said Eduardo Cuevas, a researcher from the UABCS, in reference to the fact the companies are the ones responsible for both providing a warning and applying containment and emergency measures. According to Cuevas, companies have no incentive to report their own mistakes.
In official reports, the company responsible for the most oil spill events throughout Mexico — including in the Gulf of Mexico — is the state-owned company Pemex, followed by Petrofac, a private company. At the national level, Petrofac is responsible for 15 oil spills that occurred between Jan. 9, 2018, and Dec. 20, 2020, of which 12 were in the Gulf of Mexico.
Since 2018, the company has been dismantling its operations in Mexico to move its focus toward renewable energy. However, the company’s shift toward “green” investments meant that its extractive infrastructure in Mexico was left intact. Since October 2018, this infrastructure has been occupied by another oil and gas company Perenco, which is owned by one of the wealthiest families in France: the Perrodos. Perenco has the second-highest number of spills that have been officially recorded among private companies in Mexico.
Perenco’s environmental history is not limited to Mexico. Its operations in the Colombian Amazon has some of highest number of sanctions and fines over the last 10 years, according to an investigation by Mongabay Latam.
In Mexico, according to data from the CNH in response to a request for information, Perenco has received no sanctions for the spills that occurred since its acquisition. However, the company received a sanction for failing to produce enough oil to meet its targeted number of barrels. There is also no record of any sanction against Petrofac for the 12 officially recorded oil spills.
In response to this investigation, a spokesperson from Perenco stated that the spills and leaks in Mexico have occurred inland, and that the company’s environmental strategy consists of purchasing surveillance equipment. Perenco blames the oil spills on acts of vandalism.
“In the last five years, Perenco Mexico has invested significantly in the integrity of its assets, in addition to improving surveillance using CCTV and drones. Consequently, environmental incidents have decreased by 85% since 2019,” said the spokesperson.
Although it began inland, at least one oil spill from Perenco’s infrastructure in the coastal municipality of Comalcalco, has had an impact on the mangroves and the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico, according to the company’s own report to ASEA. In the report, Perenco has indicated that to stop the spill, it implemented the “installation of marine barriers in the mangrove area for the recuperation of oily water.”
This investigation, however, was not able to directly corroborate that the majority of spills are caused by acts of vandalism, since ASEA did not provide information about the causes of the spills, although this information was requested.
A lack of sanctions is representative of Mexico’s response over the last six years. From 2018 until now, the government recorded 86 official oil spills, but it initiated sanctioning processes against oil companies for only 48 of them. The government also imposed fines in less than half of those cases (21), and only eight of them have been paid, according to the CNH in response to a request for information. When asked about the level of impunity, the CNH did not respond (by the time of this article’s publication in Spanish in February). Our team of journalists never received any response from Pemex.
“There is very little fishing left”
About 80% of the fish on the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico depend on sites like the Laguna de Términos for their reproduction and feeding, according to Ramsar, which lists the lagoon as a wetland of international importance.
The Laguna de Términos is the largest freshwater gateway from Mexico to the gulf and a migration corridor for hundreds of species of reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish and mammals. Dozens of these species are considered endangered, such as the jabiru (Jabiru mycteria), a stork that is the second-largest bird in the Americas. Only 20 individuals remain in Mexico.
The value of the gulf’s ecosystem, according to Eduardo Cuevas, is incalculable. In addition to supporting fisheries, it also provides life to protected shark species — such as the whale shark (Rhincodon typus) — and sea turtles.
With pollution, however, “not only are marine ecosystems affected, but also terrestrial ones,” said Eva Coronado, a specialist in socio-ecological systems at the National School of Higher Education (ENES) — part of the UNAM — in Yucatán. “All the contaminants that reach the coast have effects on the lagoon areas … and the mangrove ecosystems near the area,” she said.
Pemex is 20th on a list of 57 companies that have generated 80% of the world’s carbon emissions since the Paris Agreement was signed, according to InfluenceMap, a British research center. While oil companies contribute a great deal to the climate crisis, they also weaken ecosystems’ abilities to respond to catastrophic events catalyzed by that same crisis, such as hurricanes. In addition, oil transfers from plankton to larger animals, representing possible harm to humans that have not been studied in depth, according to the specialists. For fishers like Naal Hernández, the value of ecosystems such as the Laguna de Términos is simple: They are his entire life.
“We’ve seen fish, turtles [and] dolphins coated in oil, and when the oil is two miles [3.2 kilometers] from shore, there are no fish, because of the odor that it gives off. The impact [of the spills] is so strong,” said Naal Hernández.
His experience is common throughout the entire coast along the gulf. Mexico’s National Contingency Plan states that in response to oil spills, the country’s priorities are human lives, the environment and the property of the nation and of third parties. In practice, however, the fishers said, they — and their demands — have been relegated to last place.
“There is very little fishing left; we would like our current government to begin thinking that we are the farmers of the sea,” said Baudelio Cruz. “We understand that oil is necessary, but if fishing stops, if our government does not also set its sights on fishing, I don’t know what will happen because this is food for the entire country.”
Cruz also witnessed the enormous oil slick in early 2024.
“People complain to me: from Mérida to Nuevo Campechito, they send me reports and I have gathered evidence, but [Pemex] closes the door on me. We are going to request an appeal for the damage, and they tell us that there is none, because they are simply ‘natural releases of oil’ — imagine,” said Naal Hernández.
Teodoro Wilson, another fisher, added, “No one touches Pemex. They do what they want, and we cannot complain. We have even written to the President of [Mexico], and no one attends to us.”
The fishers said that there is a history of the companies and authorities attempting to evade reality with the excuse of “natural releases of oil.” The Ek’ Balam oil spill, which was publicized through an alert from civil society instead of a warning from Pemex or any Mexican authorities, was also played down. The fishers said the government and Pemex claimed that it was a “natural release of oil,” but this claim collapsed as the oil spill grew. The Ek’ Balam disaster exceeded 460 square kilometers (about 178 square miles), and there is evidence that it spanned more than 1,000 km (about 621 mi) along the western side of the Gulf of Mexico, even reaching the coasts of Veracruz and Tamaulipas, two states in eastern Mexico.
Fishers and researchers are convinced that the technologies used to detect oil spills could be converted into a powerful environmental monitoring and surveillance mechanism. Such a tool could be used to circumnavigate the limitations of current laws, which leave almost everything in companies’ hands.
“We are really convinced that this information is useful for [the authorities], but current practices and the obscurantism of the regulations do not allow for this flow of valuable data for immediate action, monitoring [over time] and attending to spills,” said Uribe. “We do not want to judge them … we are here to give them information. [They can] use it, incorporate it into their decision-making [process].”
‘We exist too’: The fishers’ cry for help
Elías Naal, Baudelio Cruz and Wilbert Cosmopolus, three fishers who have now involuntarily become defenders of their territory, are clinging to their trade. They said they want to protect their way of life, but what they lack now — in addition to the fish themselves — is money and time to devote to fishing. They need to purchase new fishing nets to replace those that have been ruined by being coated in oil, and they need new motors to allow them to travel increasingly long distances.
In the last five years, the fishers claimed, their production has decreased by 40%, earning them less than $400 (about 8,000 Mexican pesos) per month.
“Our fishing areas have been invaded. We have so many fishing-restricted areas where there are platforms that are now obsolete, but we cannot go there to fish. We have been fighting; we have requested that our representatives intervene to see if we can manage to receive permission to fish on those platforms that are no longer useful for anything, because there are plenty of fish there, but we haven’t been able to,” said Baudelio Cruz.
The government restriction seeks to prevent potential terrorist attacks or interference in oil extraction. This was declared by former President Vicente Fox when the exclusion zone was expanded in 2003 as a response to the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001.
According to public data from the CNH, 2023 was a record year for investment in oil exploration wells. However, simultaneously, ASEA’s budget for monitoring and control decreased by almost a third, dropping from about $26.8 million in 2018 (604.7 million pesos at the 2018 exchange rate) to about $18 million in 2024 (385.2 million pesos at the 2024 exchange rate), according to data sent in response to a request for information.
This distribution of resources, which favors oil extraction, is overwhelming the fishers, who must divide themselves between their monitoring activities and fishing, which is increasingly difficult. If Mexico does not see the fishers’ value as food producers, they said, they will become easy prey for oil companies.
![“We want a dialogue, a conversation. [We want to] avoid sacrificing a sector for an industry like oil, which is necessary, but we exist,” said Baudelio Cruz.](https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/04/28155117/HQP_3806-2048x1325-1.jpg)
The fishers are demanding that their expert knowledge be incorporated into the creation of policies to balance fishing-based food production with oil extraction, and that they be allowed to at least fish near the decommissioned oil infrastructure. In case of any spills, they also demand substantial reparations for ecosystems and fishers, instead of just the delivery of new fishing nets, which has been customary until now.
“I’m taking this opportunity to request that the authorities from Pemex and our President, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, take a look at the fishers from all over Mexico,” said Baudelio Cruz. “We want a dialogue, a conversation. [We want to] avoid sacrificing a sector for an industry like oil, which is necessary, but we exist. If we must leave our fishing areas, we fishers must agree on what we are going to do.”
Banner image: A fisher at sea. Image by Héctor Quintanar.
Text: Gibran Mena Aguilar and Michelle Carrere. Field reporting: Flavia Morales Carmona. Data analysis: Naomi Morato and Gibran Mena Aguilar / Data Crítica. Photography: Héctor Quintanar. Visualization: Eduardo Mota García. Editing: Michelle Carrere, Alexa Vélez.
This article was first published in Spanish here on Feb. 17, 2025.
Pemex waste contaminates Mexican communities while talking ‘sustainability’
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