Petrobras will ask Ibama to reconsider exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River

Petrobras announced on Wednesday, 24, that it would file, later this week, a request for reconsideration of the decision of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Water Resources (IBAMA), which denied an environmental license for drilling exploratory wells for oil at the mouth of the Amazon River in Amapá.

The appeal was decided in a meeting held on Tuesday 23 between Ibama representatives and the ministries of Environment and Mines and Energy (MME), the portfolio to which Petrobras is linked.

Minister Marina Silva‘s portfolio is against Ibama’s authorization and opinion, granted on the 17th because the project “still presents worrying inconsistencies for the safe operation in a new exploratory frontier of high socio-environmental vulnerability”.

In a statement, Petrobras said that it “met the requirements in the legislation of reference to the bidding process and that it met all the technical requirements demanded by IBAMA for the project.

Still, “Petrobras is ready to meet any additional demands.”

Petrobras says that, in the reconsideration request, it will commit to expanding the fauna stabilization base in the municipality of Oiapoque in the state of Amapá.

The unit will work with the Fauna Rehabilitation and Depollution Center (CRD), built by Petrobras in Belém.

“In this way, in the unlikely event of an accident involving a leakage, the fauna care can be provided in both locations,” he says.

The distance between the Belém Center and the drilling site was one of the issues of attention highlighted by the environmental agency in its evaluation of the licensing application.

This expansion with the base in Oiapoque is added to the proposal presented previously, which already included more than one hundred professionals dedicated to animal protection, 12 vessels, two of which are on standby next to the drilling rig to act in response to emergencies, and another two vessels for fauna care with veterinary professionals.

In addition, the state-owned company also offered five aircraft that can be used for monitoring and rescue.

“This emergency response structure is the largest dimensioned by the company in the country, even larger than those existing in the Campos and Santos Basins,” Petrobras said.

In the note, the state company said that the drilling of eight exploratory wells in the region of Amapá Águas Profundas, in the sedimentary base of the mouth of the Amazon, is a commitment made with the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) from the concession obtained through bidding in 2013.

“The rejection due to environmental impracticability may result in litigation and fines, in addition to compromising the evaluation of the region’s potential, as well as energy security and the country’s own fair and safe energy transition,” Petrobras argued.

With information from Jovem Pan

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