Federal deputies defend oil and natural gas exploration on the Equatorial Margin – News of Brazil
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Deputies defended the exploitation of oil and natural gas on the Equatorial Margin, a maritime strip that extends from the coast of Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte, and includes five sedimentary basins (Foz do Amazonas, Pará-Maranhão, Barreirinhas, Ceará and Potiguar). The matter was discussed this Wednesday (14th), in a public hearing at the Mines and Energy Commission. The information is from the Câmara de Notícias Agency.
The president of the collegiate, Deputy Rodrigo de Castro (União-MG), who requested the debate, stated that the public hearing contributed to inform deputies about the importance of oil exploration in the so-called Arco Norte do Brasil.
“The hearing gave subsidy to the commission to help us unlock this issue”, said Castro. According to him, exploring the region is a necessity, especially for the states on the Equatorial Margin (Amapá, Pará, Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte). “The population of those states cannot be punished with the delay”, he added.
Deputy Joaquim Passarinho (PL-PA) also defended exploration activities on the Equatorial Margin and criticized Ibama for having rejected, in May, a license requested by Petrobras to drill a well in the Foz do Amazonas basin to check for oil .
“When an opportunity arises, for the northern states to be able to ‘relieve’ the poverty we have there, technicians appear who may have never been to the Amazon, who don’t know the mouth of the Amazon”, said Passarinho.
Deputy Gabriel Mota (Republicanos-RR) demanded a solution to the case by the government and recalled that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva himself has already expressed support for the exploration of the Equatorial Margin. “We have to know who is hindering Brazil’s development,” he said.
new frontier
The Equatorial Margin is seen as a new exploratory frontier because of oil and natural gas discoveries made in neighboring Guyana and Suriname. The advance of exploration activities is questioned by environmentalists due to the presence of little-known ecosystems.
Currently, there are 41 exploratory blocks under concession in the region, all the result of the 11th Round of the National Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANP), which took place in 2013. The then director-general of the ANP at the time of the concession, Magda Chambriard, said told the commission that the round was designed to decentralize oil activity in Brazil, concentrated in the Southeast.
Since then, however, production on the equatorial margin has been marginal, motivated by factors such as difficulties in obtaining environmental licenses and centralization of oil investments in the pre-salt layer, in the Santos basin.
Decline
During the public hearing, the guests also defended the activation of the new frontier. The director of the Department of Policy for Exploration and Production of Oil and Natural Gas at the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Rafael Bastos, said that recent government studies indicate that oil and gas production in the pre-salt layer, currently responsible for almost 80% of national production, will decline in the medium term.
“If there is no replenishment of reserves, in the 2030s we may run the risk of losing oil self-sufficiency and having the need to import crude oil,” he said. The same warning was made by the director general of the ANP, Rodolfo Saboia. “If we don’t produce oil, we will have to import it,” he said.
Licensing
Petrobras’ general manager of environmental licensing, Daniele Lomba, told deputies that the company has state-of-the-art technology capable of minimizing possible environmental risks in the activity, such as oil spills. “We have a very robust capacity. According to our models, in the worst case, of leaking 1,500 cubic meters of oil per day, we have the capacity to collect 8,900 cubic meters. So we have structure”, said Lomba.
She also stated that the elaboration of the Sedimentary Area Environmental Assessment (AAAS) is not Petrobras’ responsibility, but the Mines and Energy and Environment ministries. The document assesses the environmental risks of the presence of pollutants in sediments and the consequences for ecosystems.
The absence of the AAAS was one of the points raised by Ibama to deny the environmental license to Petrobras in May. Also present at the debate, the general coordinator of Environmental Licensing for Marine and Coastal Enterprises at Ibama, Itagyba Alvarenga, stated that the agency understands that the lack of the document prevents a better assessment of the impact of exploratory activity on the equatorial margin.
He also said that Ibama is open to dialogue to resolve the impasse. “Ibama has been a great partner in the country’s energy sector. Much of the pre-salt development is due to the efficiency of the environmental licensing process,” said Alvarenga.
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