The Brazilian Government has auctioned more than 602 lots for oil and gas exploitation this Wednesday, when the echo of applause for the historic agreement reached at the Emirates climate summit had not yet died down, a pact signed by Brazil and 199 countries more than opening the way to leave fossil fuels behind. The Petrobras tender, whose main shareholder is the State, includes inland areas in the Amazon, in the waters of the island of Fernando de Noronha and, above all, off the southern coast of the country. Brazilian environmentalists have gone to court in an attempt to paralyze the tender, in addition to crying out loud at the contradiction that the country, with Luis Inácio Lula da Silva at the head, wants to be an ecological power and lead the ecological transition while boosting the production of the fuels that cause global warming.
The auction was held as planned and ended with a third of the blocks awarded to 19 companies that have committed to investing more than 2 billion reais (400 million dollars), according to the newspaper. Or Globe.
For the first time, the conclusions of a UN climate summit mention fossil fuels, the main causes of the climate crisis. The most ambitious environmentalists consider that continuing to search for oil and gas reserves is contradictory to the urgency required to combat climate change. “Climate science is clear: we can no longer open new areas for the exploitation of fossil fuels,” said Brazilian Délcio Rodrigues, director of the ClimaInfo Institute. Another Brazilian NGO, the Arayara International Institute, has filed several lawsuits in court in an attempt to get judges to prevent the auction at the last minute.
Lula's own Government has welcomed the agreement reached at the COP, on this occasion held in a petro-monarchy. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the veteran Marina Silva, has welcomed the fact that, after 31 years of debates, the conclusions of the summit contemplate “a trajectory of leaving fossil fuels behind.” Silva, who held the same position two decades ago also under Lula, added that Brazil “defends the idea that developed and developing countries must commit to joint responsibility, however… developed countries “They should take the initiative,” he declared in Dubai, according to Reuters.
Brazilian environmentalists have dubbed Petrobras' controversial public offering “the auction of the end of the world” due to the number of blocks up for bid and because dozens of them are located in environmentally sensitive areas, according to reports prepared by NGOs. In any case, the oil company has not included in the offer the equatorial margin area in the waters off the Amazon, which it considers a new oil frontier and which environmental NGOs have placed at the center of their battle against crude oil in Brazil. .
Brazil finds itself in an uncomfortable position at a time when it is in an international campaign to be one of the countries that champions the energy transition and wants to raise funds to protect the Amazon. Both Norway and the United Kingdom took advantage of the COP to announce contributions to the Amazon Fund totaling 95 million dollars. This fund rewards the fall in deforestation with money for environmental projects.
It has already been confirmed that COP 30 will be held for the first time in the Amazon, in the city of Belém, in 2025. It is an event with enormous symbolic and, for Lula, also political meaning. There he met the Brazilian president last August with his counterparts from the Amazon countries. The Colombian president, Gustavo Pero, took the opportunity to propose that the nine countries commit to renouncing the exploitation of fossil fuels. The failure.
On the one hand, Brazil is home to the bulk of the Amazon, crucial to mitigating global warming, and on the other hand, it is the ninth largest producer of crude oil in the world. Lula – a skilled politician – is trying to reconcile the protection of the environment – one of the priorities of his Government – without affecting Petrobras, a key company for the country's economic performance, to generate employment and collect taxes.
The auction, organized months ago, is held shortly after another controversial decision that emerged while Lula was participating in COP28 in Dubai. In January Basil will join OPEC, the club of crude oil producing countries, as an observer.
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