Brazil: Lula does not rule out oil exploration at the Amazon River mouth

Giving signs that he may go against the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, the president said that he finds it difficult to believe that there will be negative effects on the Amazon in the exploration of oil at the mouth of the Amazon River.

“If exploring this oil has a problem for the Amazon, it certainly won’t be explored, but I find it difficult because it is 530 kilometers away from the Amazon,” he declared, in a press conference in Hiroshima, Japan, where he is participating in the G7 meeting, as a guest.

He said, however, that he would only decide about this when he returns to Brazil.

“I can only know when I get back.”

On Wednesday 17, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) denied Petrobras’ request to drill in the basin of the mouth of the Amazon River to explore for oil in the region.

The institute’s president, Rodrigo Agostinho, said that although Petrobras has offered all opportunities to remedy critical points, the project “still presents inconsistencies worrisome for the safe operation in a new exploratory frontier of high socio-environmental vulnerability.

Petrobras said, however, that all legal requirements were met and all tests to simulate possible emergency situations followed “strictly in accordance with the decisions and approvals of Ibama“.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy and Petrobras will appeal against Ibama’s decision, which divided the government.

Randolfe Rodrigues, the leader of the Lula government in the National Congress, decided to leave Marina Silva’s party, Rede.

With information from Revista Oeste

News Brazil, English news Brazil, Brazilian politics

More: Brazil news in English, every day from The Rio Times.