Lula’s minister denies scientific consensus on oil – 08/08/2023 – Environment

The Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, denied the scientific consensus regarding the need to prevent new investments in fossil fuels so that it is possible to comply with the Paris Agreement.

According to the UN climate panel (IPCC), in order to reach the goal of curbing global warming by a maximum of 1.5°C, it is essential that new oil, coal and gas projects are not started. . This Tuesday (8), however, Silveira denied the understanding of the body, which is the largest global reference in climate science.

“We have studies that point out, in a clear and crystalline way… that they oppose exactly this position of the IPCC”, he said. When asked which study this would be, he cited the International Energy Agency – however, the entity pointed out the same as the IPCC.

The statement was given at a press conference in Belém, at the Amazon Summit, which brings together leaders from countries in the biome.

Earlier, at the opening of the event, the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, stated that the refusal to give up fossil fuels is denialism from the left. Questioned about the statement, the Brazilian minister did not comment.

“The position of a head of state has to be respected and, democratically, it has to be debated. And from the document [final do encontro] is that we are going to have the actual result, and not polarized with respect to an isolated statement.”

Silveira defends the expansion of oil exploration in Brazil, including in the Foz do Amazonas basin, where Petrobras wants to drill the seabed to assess the size of oil reserves in the region.

The drilling license was denied by Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), which sees risk in the oil company’s activities in a region of socio-environmental vulnerability. The state-owned company appealed the decision, which is under further analysis by the supervisory body.

The head of the Ministry of Mines and Energy repeated previous speeches in the capital of Pará, in which he defended that the initiative on the Brazilian equatorial margin, which runs from Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte, is a right of the Brazilian population to “know the potentialities” of minerals and energy in the country.

“The great challenge for developing countries, such as Brazil –in the view of the country’s Minister of Mines and Energy– is to strike a balance between economic development, social conflicts and sustainability”, he said, adding that the search for this balance is the reason, for example, that 16 Ministers of State compose the National Council for Energy Policy.

“Brazil is an example of governance. It is important for us to be proud of Brazil. It is important for us to defend our matrix [energética]“, said Silveira. What is not fair to Brazilian men and women, in my view, is that we are only good for that.”

Also present at the Summit, the president of Petrobras, Jean Paul Prates, defended investment in oil as part of the energy transition.

“What we have to do, including taking advantage of the fact that the COP will be here, is to discuss how the use of oil, which will still last for a few decades, can help finance the energy transition,” he said at a press conference.

Prates also said that suspending oil exploration is a State decision, which must be complied with, but that it is still too early to deal with such a drastic matter. The energy transition itself is a transition, it is not a rupture, it does not happen overnight”, he argued.

The president of the oil company declared that he took advantage of the meeting in Belém to meet governors of the Amazonian states, recalling that the company’s activities leave royalties and important government stakes in the state of Amazonas and that the company has been producing oil in the Amazon region without any incident for decades.

Collaborated with Ana Carolina Amaral