Ibama sees unfeasible oil beyond Foz do Amazonas – 09/01/2023 – Environment

The discussion about drilling a well for oil exploration in the Foz do Amazonas basin is not the only clash between Petrobras and the government’s environmental area in the region known as the equatorial margin and identified as the main exploratory frontier in the country.

In 2021, Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) concluded that it was not feasible to drill another two wells in the region, in the Barreirinhas basin, located on the coast of Maranhão and Piauí.

The negative was in the background, given the priority given by Petrobras to the debate on Foz do Amazonas, but it reinforces the difficulties that the sector will have in the region, which goes from the coast of Ceará to the border with French Guiana.

Currently, there are 37 maritime concessions for oil exploration in the five basins that make up the equatorial margin: Potiguar, Ceará, Barreirinhas, Pará-Maranhão and Foz do Amazonas. Of these, 16 are suspended for environmental reasons in the last three basins.

Most of the suspended contracts are in the Barreirinhas basin: there are 10 of the 14 contracts currently in force. In early August, a consortium led by Shell decided to return four concessions in this area, acquired in 2013 for an amount equivalent today to R$ 480 million.

In addition to giving up the amount paid as a signing bonus, the consortium companies also lose the investments made in seismic surveys, a kind of subsoil ultrasound, in the concessions.

In a note, Shell does not relate the decision to licensing issues. He says that the result of the research was less satisfactory than expected and that the consortium decided to hand over the concessions “after a portfolio review process, which considers the companies’ strategy”.

The returned blocks were glued to the concessions in which Petrobras planned to drill two wells, but had the license denied by Ibama, on the grounds that there is no emergency plan or response structure that can guarantee the protection of corals and mangroves in case of leakage in the region.

Targets for Petrobras, blocks 3 and 5 of the Barreirinhas Basin are located approximately 140 kilometers from the coast, near the capital of Maranhão, in a water depth (distance between the surface and the bottom of the sea) of approximately 2,400 meters.

Petrobras started the license request for block 5 in 2006 and for block 3 in 2010, but Ibama decided to unify the processes in 2019.

The environmental impact report delivered by the state-owned company in December of that year foresaw the start of drilling in block 5 in November 2020. The well in block 3 would start in April 2022. The opinion recommending rejection of the license came in June 2021 and the negative in December.

The report points out possible impacts of high sensitivity, high magnitude and great importance in the event of a leak, both from an environmental point of view and from a social point of view, affecting conservation units and economic activities such as fishing.

But he says that the probability of a leak is small and that the activity will be carried out “in a safe and efficient way”, with an adequate emergency plan. For this reason, “they should not compromise the socio-environmental quality of the region”.

Ibama’s technical area, however, understands that there is no emergency plan or response structure “that can guarantee the effective protection of coral ecosystems and mangroves on the coast in the event of a ‘blowout’ [explosão] of the well or even in incidents with smaller volumes”.

And that the impacts of an accident can be irreversible, “it is not possible to establish a safe recovery period for ecosystems such as mangroves and endangered species such as manatees and countless species of birds and turtles [tartarugas] that occur in the region”.

In addition to Foz do Amazonas and Barreirinhas, another basin on the equatorial margin faces environmental restrictions, that of Pará-Maranhão. There, the five concessions currently in effect are currently suspended.

Ibama contests that the lack of licenses is delaying the activity. He says that planning done with the sector for the three-year period from 2023 to 2025 considers the evaluation of three requests for six wells on the equatorial margin.

These are the two requests already denied to Petrobras, at Foz do Amazonas and Barreirinhas, and another request by the state-owned company for three wells in the Potiguar basin, still under evaluation. This region already has oil production, which leads the company to believe that it will obtain authorization.

In the government’s environmental area, there is a feeling that there is not much effort by the oil companies to approve wells in the region and that the suspension of concessions is convenient, as it delays the investments foreseen in the contract.

In a note, Petrobras says it has a history of nearly 3,000 wells drilled in deep and ultra-deep waters, “without any type of intercurrence”.

“Which, associated with the technical capacity and experience accumulated over almost 70 years, enable the company to open new frontiers and deal with total safety with the environmental sensitivity of the equatorial margin”, he continues.

The company’s strategic plan set aside US$ 3 billion (almost R$ 15 billion) for wells in this region until 2027. According to the ANP, the equatorial margin concentrates almost half of the investments in offshore wells planned in the country until 2027.