Yesterday was a day of mixed feelings, with joy and hope, on the one hand, and sadness and uncertainty, on the other. Joy for what it means for Santa Cruz de Tenerife that the Refinery begin its dismantling and all that this entails, which is nothing more than recovering more than half a million square meters in which to begin developing a new, sustainable Santa Cruz, with green spaces, housing and infrastructure for leisure and sports . The hope that all this will bring the same prosperity that it once brought CepsaAlmost 100 years ago, in 1930, when the first refinery in Spain was built in the capital, it also accompanied what was experienced yesterday.
These positive feelings are joined by others that are not so positive, such as the sadness for the workers who, as some of them recognized, although they have been preparing for this process for ten years, it never ceases to cause them pain to leave what has been their home until now , even for several generations.
Yesterday, the Refinery began, with an institutional act, the way out of Santa Cruz. It did so with the arrival of the Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, an hour later than expected. The costs of the insularity played a trick on the minister, who saw her flight delayed for an hour. This forced to disrupt the agenda of the rest of the authorities, from the president of the Canarian Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, to the president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín, and the mayor himself, José Manuel Bermúdez.
Under a radiant sunny and crystalline day, as Torres rightly pointed out, it seemed like the perfect time to start saying goodbye to an industry that has also given the city headaches in terms of air quality. A farewell that was staged with a huge crane removing part of a container from a Merox unit, which is a process used in oil refining.
Under the watchful eye of the minister, who was in charge of giving the order to begin the removal of elements, and together with the rest of the authorities, began what, from now on, will be the path to be followed by Cepsa to move to Granadilla, where it already has authorization to continue its fuel distribution and storage work.
As Cepsa indicated, the deinstallation of the Refinery occurs after obtaining all the necessary permits, remembering that we are facing an action that will be carried out gradually and will last until 2025. To do this, “an agreed schedule will be followed with the Canarian Government before each action, guaranteeing at all times that none of them compromises the security or the activity currently provided by the facility”.
The first measure contemplates the removal and recovery of the soil from the Merox unit, and the second will focus on the environment where the crude storage tanks are located, which will also be carried out this year. When the second phase of the move to Granadilla is completed, the remaining Refinery equipment will be uninstalled and the soil will be voluntarily remediated.
