Despite the company’s insistence that the abandoned equipment won’t impact the environment, Oregon Coast Alliance executive director Cameron La Follette told The Oregonian:

“This accident, which resulted in Facebook/Edge Cable abandoning equipment and at least 6,500 gallons of bore gel under the seafloor, occurred due to corporate incompetence, combined with negligence and extreme irresponsibility about Oregon’s priceless marine natural resources.”

Department of State Lands spokesperson Ali Hansen also told the publication that state officials didn’t find out about the incident until June 17th, eliminating any “potential options for recovery of the equipment.” She did clarify, however, that the drilling fluid hasn’t spilled yet and that it’s made of “biodegradable and environmentally neutral” components.

The agency has notified the company it was in default of its permits, because it’s essentially using the area for the unauthorized storage of equipment. It’s giving Facebook 30 days to reach an agreement with the state regarding damages to be paid and to address “current and future risks and liabilities that may arise from the abandoned” drilling tools and fluid. Facebook also has 180 days to “remove the abandoned pipe, equipment, tools and drilling mud in consultation with the (state) and without causing damage to the environment” or to apply for a new permit that allows the company to leave the equipment at the site.

We’ve reached out to Facebook to ask how it plans to address the agency’s demands. It told The Hill, however, that the project has been delayed due to COVID-19 and that it plans to resume construction in early 2021.

The Portugal-South Africa portion of the Equiano cable should be up and running in 2021. It’s named after writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who was born in Nigeria — a likely port of call for an extension of the cable.

Google says it has invested $47 billion over the last three years to bolster its tech infrastructure. Equiano is the 14th cable it has a stake in overall, and Google’s third private international cable project. The first, Curie, was completed in April and runs between Chile and Los Angeles. The other cable, Dunant, will link France and the US and should be online next year. Such cables are vital for connectivity, as they shuttle around 99 percent of the planet’s data traffic.

The Equiano cable, which will be installed by Alcatel Submarine Networks, is a little different from the others, according to Google. “Equiano will be the first subsea cable to incorporate optical switching at the fiber-pair level, rather than the traditional approach of wavelength-level switching,” it wrote in a blog post. Google also claimed it’ll have around “20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region.”

Once the fiber optic cable is in place, Cuban citizens will have faster access to content hosted on Google servers, and the Cuban government will see cost savings. At the moment, ETECSA must pay third-party fees for passing traffic to sites like YouTube, Google Maps and Google.com.

Google and Cuba have a history of collaboration. Even before US-Cuba relations improved, Google made Chrome freely available throughout the country. In 2016, Obama touted Google’s plans to bring internet to Cuba. Shortly after, Google installed local servers to speed up its services, and in 2017, Google became the first foreign internet company to go live on the island.

Considering that Cuba first tested home internet in 2016 and just launched mobile internet nationwide last summer, the country has come a long way in a relatively short span. While there’s no proposed timeline for the new fiber optic cable, this agreement does establish a team of engineers to sort through the necessary details and get the project started.

Firma @ETECSA_Cuba Memorándum de Entendimiento con @Google para iniciar negociaciones sobre el servicio de intercambio de tráfico en Internet, que mejorará la calidad de acceso a los contenidos, como parte de la estrategia de #Cuba para el desarrollo y la informatización. pic.twitter.com/uHQ7hjpINX

— ETECSA (@ETECSA_Cuba) March 28, 2019