Oil revenues will be used for energy transition, says Lula
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that Brazil will use oil revenues to invest in its energy transition. The large amount of money obtained from fossil fuels, he argued, is what will help state-run oil giant Petrobras transition from an oil company to an energy company.
The president made his statement early Friday morning (Oct. 24) shortly before departing Indonesia for Malaysia.
When asked what message he would like to convey to the world amid the developments in oil exploration studies in the Equatorial Margin and COP30 to be held in Belém, President Lula stated that, first and foremost, people need to know that Brazil is one of the countries with the highest levels of renewable energy.
“Brazilian gasoline uses 30-percent ethanol. That is why our gasoline is cleaner than others. Our diesel fuel has 20-percent biodiesel. That is why it is cleaner than others,” he noted.
Equatorial Margin
Regarding the Equatorial Margin, President Lula explained that the authorization granted by the national environmental authority IBAMA for oil exploration near the mouth of the Amazon river “was only a permit to conduct research,” adding that “from conducting research to actually having oil it takes a long time, because you need new licenses to do things – and that’s in a company that has expertise.”
He recalled that Petrobras’ competence is also renowned for the fact that the company “has never had an oil spill anywhere in its history.”
“It is possibly the company with the greatest expertise in prospecting for oil in deep waters without causing any damage. Now, if we’re talking about the protection of forests and we want to work towards reducing the use of fossil fuels, one way to do this is to use oil money to consolidate the energy transition of planet Earth,” he argued.
“Petrobras is a company that will gradually shift from being an oil company to an energy company,” he added.
Investment
President Lula went on to point out that Petrobras already invests in other types of energy, and that the money needed for this comes precisely from oil – a fuel, he said, that will still be necessary for decades to come.
“It’s easy to talk about fossil fuels like that, but it’s not easy to say who is currently in a position to free themselves from fossil fuels – no one is,” he stressed.
