Seismic Risks: a Criminological Analysis of European Investment Bank Support for the Castor Project

Abstract

The Castor project was a proposed underground gas storage facility off Spain’s Mediterranean coast financed through a public–private partnership (PPP) between the Spanish state and a consortium led by the Spanish conglomerate Grupo ACS. During the project’s development, cost overruns led to it being refinanced through a bond issuance organized by the European Investment Bank (EIB)—the finance arm of the European Union (EU). On reaching the injection stage, gas escaped violently causing hundreds of small-scale earthquakes resulting in the project’s closure and, as per the terms of the concession, the generation of a €1.3 billion debt for Spanish gas consumers. Using criminological concepts and theory, this article will first explore how the seismic risks that the project posed were excluded from the EIB appraisal process before identifying the causes of the disaster as a product of the “financialization” of infrastructure and investor protection frameworks needed to sustain it.