Lula argues for oil exploration at Amazon river mouth
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Wednesday (Feb. 12) that the country’s environment authority Ibama should authorize state-run oil giant Petrobras to drill wells in search of oil at the basin of the Amazon river mouth—Foz do Amazonas in Portuguese—on the Equatorial Margin off the coast of Amapá state. The region has great potential to contain oil reservoirs, but exploration is being questioned due to environmental risks.
“We’re holding a meeting maybe this week or the next with the office of the chief of staff with Ibama. We need to authorize Petrobras to do the research. That’s what we want. Whether or not we’re going to start the exploration after that is another discussion. What we can’t do is allow this dilly-dallying to go on. Ibama is a government body that seems to be against the government,” he said in an interview with Rádio Diário FM, in Macapá, capital city of Amapá.
The Equatorial Margin encompasses five offshore basins, including the Foz do Amazonas basin, off the coast of Amapá, whose license for maritime prospecting sparked public debate regarding exploration in the region and was denied in May 2023. At the time, Ibama mentioned “a set of technical inconsistencies” for safe operation in the area.
In Lula’s view, Petrobras is a responsible company with vast experience in deep-water oil exploration. “We’re going to follow all the rites so we won’t cause any damage to nature, but we can’t just sit around if there might be wealth underneath us and not explore it—especially since this is just the wealth we need to carry out the long-dreamed-of energy transition,” he argued.
Strategic Plan
Petrobras’ Strategic Plan for 2024–2028 includes investments of $3.1 billion and the drilling of 16 wells along the entire length of the Equatorial Margin, which runs from Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte. However, no more than two of these wells have been authorized by Ibama.
Of the total number of concessions, 11 are already in their production phase—five with small levels and six being handed back, as no significant discoveries were made.
History
Since the 1980s, the entire Brazilian Equatorial Margin has undergone research aimed at uncovering new reserves, increasing the country’s production of fossil energy sources.
According to Petrobras, 700 wells have been drilled in shallow waters along the entire stretch of the region—most of them before the existence of the National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels (ANP). But many of these were abandoned following mechanical accidents.
In 2015, the discovery of large volumes of oil in the Guyana Suriname basin sparked investor interest in advancing investigations into sedimentary basins similar to those that yielded 11 billion barrels of oil in neighboring Guyana.
