Brazil’s president this week amped up stress for a significant oil challenge to go forward on the mouth of the Amazon River, regardless of criticism from environmentalists because the nation prepares to host UN local weather talks in November.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 79, aspires to make Brazil a pacesetter within the battle in opposition to world warming, however has fiercely defended oil exploration as key to the expansion of Latin America’s greatest economic system.
“We wish oil as a result of it is going to be round for a very long time,” Lula mentioned Wednesday, arguing that the windfall from the black gold ought to be used “to finance the vitality transition, which might be very costly.”
He was talking as Brazil’s environmental safety company IBAMA, an autonomous public physique, is mulling whether or not to grant state-owned oil large Petrobras an exploration license in an offshore space generally known as the Equatorial Margin.
That maritime space extends over 350,000 sq. kilometers (135,000 sq. miles) throughout northern Brazil and lies some 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the mouth of the Amazon River.
Petrobras estimates the potential reserves within the basin at 10 billion barrels.
Brazil’s confirmed reserves amounted to fifteen.9 billion barrels in 2023, in accordance with the federal government.
Nonetheless, the challenge has been extremely criticized, on condition that fossil fuels reminiscent of oil are the principle reason behind greenhouse fuel emissions liable for world warming.
– ‘Wage conflict to acquire peace’ –The primary two years of Lula’s third presidential mandate noticed a number of environmental successes, with a pointy discount in deforestation and the upward revision of greenhouse fuel emission discount targets.
However specialists say the looming oil challenge tarnishes Lula’s environmental ambitions, only a few months earlier than COP30 — the thirtieth session of the UN local weather change convention — is held for the primary time within the Amazon, within the metropolis of Belem.
“You possibly can’t be a local weather chief and on the similar time intention to extend the manufacturing of fossil fuels,” mentioned Suely Araujo, from Brazilian NGO Local weather Observatory.
Araujo, a former IBAMA president, mentioned the argument that the vitality transition will be financed with oil revenues “is tantamount to saying that we wish to wage conflict to acquire peace.”
“Opening the Amazon to gasoline exploration goes in opposition to the (authorities’s) discourse on preserving the Amazon to assist regulate the local weather,” mentioned Ilan Zugman, Latin America director of the 350.org local weather NGO.
Virtually half of the vitality consumed in Brazil comes from renewable sources, greater than 3 times the worldwide common, in accordance with official information.
However the nation can be Latin America’s largest oil producer and the eighth largest on the planet, producing a mean of three.4 million barrels of oil per day in 2024.
Lula has identified that nations like Guyana and Suriname have been already “exploring oil very near our Equatorial Margin.”
“We have to discover a resolution through which we assure the nation, the world and the folks that we are going to not blow up any timber, nothing within the Amazon River, nothing within the Atlantic Ocean,” Lula mentioned this week.
Toya Manchineri, from the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, warned that the challenge additionally threatened Indigenous peoples and will trigger “irreversible environmental injury, destroying forests and polluting rivers.”
– Tensions inside authorities –After IBAMA denied Petrobras an exploration license for the Equatorial Margin in 2023, the oil large introduced a brand new plan which remains to be into account.
In October 2024, IBAMA demanded extra particulars from Petrobras on how it will include an oil spill ought to one happen within the biodiverse area.
“In December, Petrobras introduced a brand new proposal … at present being analyzed by our technical staff,” the company advised AFP.
The challenge has provoked tensions inside the authorities as effectively.
Setting Minister Marina Silva, who oversees IBAMA, mentioned Thursday that she didn’t intend to “exert any affect” on the company to authorize the challenge.
Silva, a revered environmentalist, mentioned it will be a “technical” choice and never a political one.
In the meantime, the minister of mines and vitality, Alexandre Silveira, a staunch defender of the challenge, urged IBAMA to make use of “widespread sense” and authorize the exploration as shortly as attainable.
