Prosecutors renew request in lawsuit against Ultracargo over Santos Port fire; damages claim reaches R$ 3.6 billion

The São Paulo State Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPSP) and the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) have once again asked the Federal Court in Santos, on the coast of São Paulo state, to grant urgent provisional relief — a preliminary injunction — as part of the environmental civil lawsuit jointly filed against Ultracargo over the consequences of the fire at the company’s facility in the Alemoa district of Santos in April 2015.

In June this year, Judge Igor Lima Vieira Pinto, of the 3rd Federal Court of Santos, denied the preliminary injunction, which sought the immediate creation of a compensation fund with an initial contribution proportional to the severity of the damage. The lawsuit, however, remains ongoing, and there is currently no expected date for a ruling.

The case seeks an order requiring the payment of compensation for material and environmental damages already caused, as well as collective moral damages. The amount at stake is estimated at R\$ 3.6 billion. A Tribuna also reported on the case in June.

The 2015 fire was caused by an error involving suction and discharge pipelines, which led to the explosion of a valve and sparked a blaze in six fuel tanks, burning 40 million liters of fuel.

Firefighters needed eight days to bring the flames under control after the fire began on April 2 of that year. Around 8 billion liters of seawater and 426,000 liters of a special gelatinous firefighting foam known as “cold fire” were used. Cetesb, the São Paulo State Environmental Agency, classified it as the largest disaster of its kind in Brazil’s history.

Responses

Signed by Santos public prosecutor Carlos Cabral Cabrera, the MPSP’s reply was filed on June 19 and argued that the company’s defense was inconsistent.

According to the document, the arguments raised in the defense filings should be entirely rejected, allowing the case to proceed normally, with the granting of the requested urgent relief and, ultimately, the full acceptance of the claims presented in the initial complaint.

“The scale of the fire, with the emission of pollutants and changes to local environmental conditions, is sufficient to characterize significant harm to the community, capable of giving rise to compensation for collective moral damages,” the document states.

“Environmental damage is continuous in nature, and failure to adopt appropriate measures may irreversibly compromise the restoration of ecological balance,” it adds.

The MPF’s reply, authored by federal prosecutor Antonio José Donizetti Molina Daloia, was filed almost a month later, on July 20. It emphasized that the plaintiffs “fully reiterate the terms of the initial petition, reaffirming that the defenses presented are not sufficient to eliminate joint and strict liability.”

“It has been demonstrated that the administrative route, despite having been pursued for a decade, proved clearly insufficient, with recovery efforts stalled in 94.13% of the degraded mangrove area and deliberate inaction regarding impacts on public health,” the prosecutor stated.

“The attempt to reduce the largest industrial disaster in the Port of Santos to a ‘temporary impact’ and to negligible market-based valuations violates the constitutional principle of full compensation and disregards the independent nature of interim and intergenerational environmental damages,” he added.

Ultracargo’s response

Contacted again, Ultracargo maintained the position it gave in June.

In a statement, the company said it “does not comment and reiterates that, since the incident in 2015, it has acted transparently and collaboratively with the competent authorities, having allocated more than R\$ 82 million to social and environmental initiatives and to support fishing activities in the region.”

The company also said it had made “substantial investments in operational safety” and that it “remains committed to safety, the environment and surrounding communities.”

Conduct Adjustment Agreement

It was only four years after the Ultracargo fire, in May 2019, that a partial Conduct Adjustment Agreement (TAC) was reached between Ultracargo, the São Paulo State Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office regarding environmental and economic damages.

According to the two prosecutorial bodies, 94.13% of the mangrove area that was supposed to be restored still remains without the effective implementation of a Degraded Area Recovery Plan (Prad), as required by Cetesb.

This corresponds to 14.7408 hectares — 147,408 square meters — out of a total of 15.6685 hectares, or 156,685 square meters.

In other words, only 0.9277 hectare — 9,277 square meters, equivalent to 5.87% of the required area — had undergone restoration work.

In its submission to the court, however, Ultracargo stated that “the measures provided for in the Prad approved by Cetesb in December 2021 are currently being implemented, including the restoration of an area exceeding 15 hectares of mangrove as environmental compensation.”