By Marta Nogueira and Fábio Teixeira
OIAPOQUE, Brazil (Reuters) – State energy company Petrobras has faced growing resistance from indigenous groups and government agencies to its flagship exploration project, which would open up the most promising part of Brazil’s northern coast to oil drilling.
Environmental agency Ibama denied Petrobras a license for offshore exploratory drilling in the Foz do Amazonas area last year, citing possible impacts on indigenous groups and the sensitive coastal biome. But an appeal by Petrobras for Ibama to reverse its decision attracted powerful political support.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in September that Brazil should be able to “research” the region’s potential resources, given the national interest. Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira told journalists last week that it is “Brazil’s right to know the potential” of offshore fields.
This reinforced Petrobras’ optimistic rhetoric about its chances of obtaining a license to drill blocks off the coast of the state of Amapá.
“Get ready, Amapá, because we are coming,” Petrobras CEO Jean Paul Prates told local politicians and oil executives at an event last month that promoted offshore exploration along the north coast, in an area known as Equatorial Margin. He called it “perhaps the last frontier of the oil era for Brazil.”
He said he hopes to begin drilling in the second half of this year or sooner in the most promising part of the Equatorial Margin, called the Foz do Amazonas basin, at the mouth of the Amazon River, several hundred kilometers away. Foz do Amazonas shares geology with the coast of neighboring Guyana, where Exxon is developing huge fields.
Ibama chief Rodrigo Agostinho said in November that a decision would be made in early 2024, although labor disputes at the agency have slowed the pace of environmental licensing since then.
Visits to four indigenous villages, interviews with more than a dozen local leaders and previously undisclosed documents show growing organized opposition to Petrobras’ attempt to reverse the suspension of exploratory drilling.
Petrobras has attracted new government scrutiny. Indigenous affairs agency Funai in December asked Ibama regulators to conduct several other studies to assess impacts, according to a Dec. 11 government memo from Funai to Ibama obtained in a freedom of information request. The proposed studies would have to be carried out before Ibama could decide whether to accept Petrobras’ appeal.
In July 2022, the Council of Chiefs of the Indigenous People of Oiapoque (CCPIO), an umbrella group that represents more than 60 indigenous villages in the region, requested the involvement of the Federal Public Ministry, denouncing an alleged violation of their rights.
Brazilian prosecutors are mandated 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. Records from prosecutors’ preliminary investigation, seen by Reuters, show that in December 2023, the CCPIO asked them to mediate a 13-month formal consultation with Petrobras on indigenous views on the project.
The consultation process, along with studies proposed by Funai, would push a decision to 2025, when Brazil hosts the COP30 climate change summit in the Amazon city of Belém, which could make it more politically difficult to approve drilling, one person said. close to CCPIO. Reuters.
The minutes of a June 2023 meeting between Petrobras, CCPIO leaders and prosecutors show that the company offered to consult local communities about possible commercial oil production in the area, if Ibama requests it, but did not commit 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 requests has passed.
“The definition of whether or not consultation with indigenous peoples and/or traditional communities is necessary occurs in the initial phase of the environmental licensing process,” said Petrobras.
Ibama has not yet responded to indigenous affairs agency Funai’s recommendation late last year for further assessment of the effects of Petrobras’ exploration plans, according to an April 3 Funai document seen by Reuters.
Both agencies did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. The CCPIO and prosecutors said a consultation must be done before Ibama issues a license to drill.
Fault LINES The drilling impasse 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 who will be able to reap the benefits of a new oil-producing region. Petroleum.
Silveira, the energy minister, said a single block at Foz do Amazonas, off the coast of Amapá state, could produce more than 5.6 billion barrels of oil, which would be the company’s biggest discovery in more than a decade. .
In an appeal to Ibama, the company stated that the exploration will not have a negative impact on local communities.
“We ratify the understanding that there is no direct impact from the temporary activity of drilling a well 175 km from the coast on indigenous communities,” said Petrobras.
Local people and some environmentalists warn that drilling could threaten coastal mangroves and vast wetlands rich in fish and plants, while disrupting the lives of the 8,000 indigenous people in Oiapoque, on the far north of Brazil’s coast.
The CCPIO, the highest indigenous authority in Oiapoque, is made up of more than 60 caciques, or caciques, representing more than 8,000 people. They are not opposed to the search for oil itself, but they invoke what they say is a right to prior consultation with Petrobras, with supervision by the Federal Public Ministry and Funai.
Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, signed by Brazil, says that governments must consult indigenous and tribal peoples through their representative institutions, whenever they consider legislative or administrative measures that may directly affect them.
CHANGE IN PROGRESS
Drilling plans are already changing Oiapoque. Waves of migrant workers arrived looking for jobs in an oil industry that doesn’t yet exist, said state deputy Inácio Monteiro.
Monteiro said he meets frequently with indigenous constituents, talking to them about the benefits that Petrobras could bring to Oiapoque, including jobs, tax revenues and social programs.
However, CCPIO and its allies have increasingly expressed their resistance as Petrobras gains support for its call, including at the COP28 climate summit in December, where Luene Karipuna told a panel that Petrobras and Local politicians tried to silence their people.
“Strategically, this prior consultation is our only safety net,” said Karipuna, 25, who is studying to be a teacher near her home in the village of Santa Izabel, where the marshes fill with seawater at certain points. times of the year.
When rivers run low, tides bring in saltwater fish that residents eat, but some interviewed by Reuters fear this could easily cause oil spills.
POLITICAL PRESSURE
Indigenous leaders said a plenary press of local politicians in support of Petrobras was on display at a public hearing in May 2023 that Monteiro, the state lawmaker, called just days after Petrobras was denied a license.
Powerful Amapá politicians, including Lula’s main allies, gathered within days at the Oiapoque City Council 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 were in favor of drilling, according to minutes of the meeting seen by Reuters.
Karipuna said he spoke on behalf of the coordinator of the CCPIO chiefs council, who was absent for “health reasons”.
Petrobras later cited Karipuna’s endorsement in its appeal of the denied drilling license and described him as a “representative of the CCPIO”.
However, the CCPIO coordinator, Cacique Edmilson Oliveira, told Reuters that he was not sick that day. The CCPIO refused to participate in the hastily called event, according to a May 18 letter sent in response to Monteiro’s invitation to the hearing and seen by Reuters.
“This is very worrying. That’s why we say that we already feel threatened,” said Oliveira, accusing Petrobras of distorting the vision of indigenous leaders. “We never sat down and came to an agreement for approval.”
In a telephone interview, Karipuna confirmed that he worked at city hall and that he is not a member of the CCPIO – although Petrobras used his words as its main argument to Ibama that indigenous representatives supported drilling. He also walked back his comments in favor of drilling.
“To this day, many people have doubts about this Petrobras business,” he said.
Asked about the mischaracterization of Karipuna, Petrobras cited the minutes of the May 2023 meeting, without providing further details.
(Reporting by Marta Nogueira in Oiapoque and Fabio Teixeira in Rio de Janeiro; editing by Brad Haynes and Alistair Bell)
