By Marta Nogueira and Fabio Teixeira
OIAPOQUE, Brazil (Reuters) – State energy company Petrobras has faced growing resistance from indigenous groups and government agencies to its major exploration project, which would open up the most promising part of Brazil’s northern coast to oil drilling.
Last year, environmental agency Ibama denied Petrobras a license for offshore exploratory drilling in the Foz do Amazonas area, citing possible impacts on indigenous groups and the sensitive coastal biome. But Petrobras’ appeal for Ibama to reverse its decision has won strong political support.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in September that Brazil should be able to “research” the region’s potential resources, given national interest. Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira told reporters last week that it is Brazil’s “right to know the potential” of offshore fields.
This has strengthened Petrobras’ bullish rhetoric about its chances of obtaining a license to drill blocks off the coast of Amapa state.
“Get ready Amapa, because we are coming,” Petrobras CEO Jean Paul Prates told local politicians and oil executives last month at an event promoting offshore exploration along the north coast in an area known as the equatorial margin. He called it “perhaps the last frontier of the oil age for Brazil.”
It said it plans to start drilling in the second half of this year or earlier in the most promising part of the equatorial margin, called the Foz do Amazonas basin, for the mouth of the Amazon River (NASDAQ:) several hundred kilometers away. Foz de Amazonas shares geology with the coast of neighboring Guyana, where Exxon (NYSE:) is developing huge deposits.
Ibama chief Rodrigo Agostinho said in November that a decision would be made in early 2024, although labor disputes within the agency have since slowed the pace of environmental licensing.
Visits to four indigenous villages, interviews with more than a dozen local leaders and previously undisclosed documents show organized opposition is growing to Petrobras’ attempt to reverse its block on exploratory drilling.
Petrobras has attracted renewed government scrutiny. Indigenous affairs agency Funai asked Ibama regulators in December to conduct several more studies to assess the impacts, according to a Dec. 11 government note from Funai to Ibama obtained in a freedom of information request. The proposed studies would have to be conducted before Ibama can decide whether to accept Petrobras’ appeal.
In July 2022, the Council of Chiefs of Indigenous Peoples of Oiapoque (CCPIO), an umbrella group representing more than 60 indigenous villages in the area, requested the involvement of federal prosecutors, alleging a violation of their rights.
Brazilian prosecutors have a mandate to protect indigenous peoples, often taking their side in disputes with companies or federal and state governments. In September 2022 they recommended that Ibama not issue the license before formal consultation with local communities. Prosecutors’ preliminary investigation documents, seen by Reuters, show that in December 2023, the CCPIO asked them to broker a formal 13-month consultation with Petrobras on indigenous people’s views on the project.
The consultation process, along with studies proposed by Funai, would push a decision until 2025, when Brazil hosts the COP30 climate change summit in the Amazon city of Belem, which could make it more politically difficult to approve drilling, he said a person close to the CCPIO. Reuters.
Minutes of a June 2023 meeting between Petrobras, CCPIO leaders and prosecutors show that the company offered to consult local communities on possible commercial oil production in the area if Ibama requested it, but did not committed to a consultation before drilling exploratory wells.
Asked about calls from indigenous leaders for immediate consultations, Petrobras told Reuters in a statement that the time for such calls has passed.
“The determination of whether or not it is necessary to consult indigenous peoples and/or traditional communities occurs at the initial stage of the environmental licensing process,” Petrobras said.
According to an April 3 Funai document seen by Reuters, Ibama has not yet responded to indigenous affairs agency Funai’s recommendation late last year to carry out further assessments of the effects of Petrobras’ exploration plans.
Both agencies did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. The CCPIO and prosecutors said a consultation must be carried out before Ibama issues a license to drill.
FAIL LINES The drilling stalemate has created a fault line in Lula’s government, which is balancing its promises to protect the Amazon and its indigenous peoples with the interests of Petrobras and political allies poised to reap the benefits of a new oil-producing region.
Silveira, the energy minister, said a single Foz de Amazonas block off the coast of Amapa state could produce more than 5.6 billion barrels of oil, which would be the company’s largest discovery in more than a year. decade.
In its appeal to Ibama, the company said the exploration will not have any negative impact on local communities.
“We confirm the understanding that there is no direct impact on indigenous communities of the temporary well drilling activity 175 km offshore,” Petrobras said.
Local people and some environmentalists warn that drilling could threaten coastal mangroves and vast wetlands rich in fish and plants, while destroying the lives of 8,000 indigenous people in Oiapoque, on Brazil’s northern coast.
The CCPIO, the highest indigenous authority in the Oiapoque, is made up of more than 60 caciques, or tribal leaders, representing more than 8,000 people. They do not oppose oil exploration itself, but invoke what they say is a right to prior consultation by Petrobras, with oversight from the federal prosecutors’ office and Funai.
Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, signed by Brazil, states that governments must consult indigenous and tribal peoples through their representative institutions, whenever they consider legislative or administrative measures that could directly affect them.
CHANGE ON FOOT
Drilling plans are already changing Oiapoque. Waves of migrant workers have arrived seeking work in an oil industry that doesn’t yet exist, state lawmaker Inacio Monteiro said.
Monteiro said he meets often with indigenous voters, talking to them about the benefits Petrobras could bring to Oiapoque, including jobs, tax revenue and social programs.
Yet the CCPIO and its allies have become increasingly vocal in their resistance as Petrobras gathers support for its call, including at December’s COP28 climate summit, where Luene Karipuna told a panel that Petrobras and local politicians had tried to put silence his people.
“From a strategic point of view, this prior consultation is our only safety net,” said Karipuna, 25, who is studying to become a teacher, near her home in the village of Santa Izabel, where swamps fill with water. sea at certain times of the year.
When rivers fall, the tides bring with them saltwater fish that villagers eat, but some interviewed by Reuters fear this could easily cause oil spills.
POLITICAL PRESSURE
Indigenous leaders said a full-court press of local politicians supporting Petrobras was on display at a May 2023 public hearing that Monteiro, the state lawmaker, called just days after Petrobras’ license was denied.
Amapa political operatives, including key Lula allies, gathered within days at the Oiapoque town hall for the hearing to promote Petrobras’ drilling plans.
At the event, a man in a white polo shirt and feather headdress, Ramon Karipuna, told the crowd that indigenous people supported drilling, according to minutes of the meeting seen by Reuters.
Karipuna said he spoke on behalf of the coordinator of the CCPIO council of leaders, who was absent for “health reasons”.
Petrobras then cited Karipuna’s support in its appeal against the denied drilling license and described him as a “representative of the CCPIO”.
However, CCPIO Cacique coordinator Edmilson Oliveira told Reuters he was not ill that day. The CCPIO had refused to take part in the hastily convened event, according to a letter sent May 18 in response to Monteiro’s invitation to the hearing and seen by Reuters.
“This is very worrying. That’s why we say we already feel threatened,” Oliveira said, accusing Petrobras of distorting the views of indigenous leaders. “We never sat down to reach an agreement for approval.”
In a telephone interview, Karipuna confirmed that he worked at city hall and was not a member of the CCPIO – although Petrobras used his words as its main argument at Ibama that indigenous representatives supported the drilling. He also backed away from his pro-drilling comments.
“Even today many people have doubts about this Petrobras business,” he said.
When asked about its mischaracterization of Karipuna, Petrobras cited the minutes of the May 2023 meeting, without providing further details.