Everyone knows the Lula government in Brazil is very vocal in support of a transition to a “green” economy, but that does not mean they are going to give up expanding their oil industry. Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira defends the government’s policy of stepping up oil and gas exploration, including by allowing exploration off the coast of the Amazon (which ignorant greenies claim is “pristine nature,” rather than a man-made richness).
The Financial Times took umbrage at this policy, protesting in a Sept. 27 piece that “in the same week that Lula was telling the UN General Assembly that the climate crisis `knocks on our door, destroys our homes, our cities, our countries, kills and imposes suffering on our brothers,’ Silveira was arguing that exploratory drilling in an ecologically sensitive area where the Amazon river meets the Atlantic should go ahead.”
Silveira told the City of London rag: “It’s the right of the Brazilian people to understand their mineral wealth, whether on or offshore…. I don’t see any contradiction between the exploration of oil and gas and the clear, objective, safe and firm decision … to carry out the energy transition in a just and inclusive way. The reality of the world is that we still need fossil fuels.”
The FT grumbled that Brazil is already projected to become the world’s sixth biggest oil producer by 2030 if its current projects are realized, but the Brazilian government plans project that if reserves possibly containing up to 30 billion barrels of oil equivalent are discovered off the Amazon coast, Brazil could become the fourth biggest oil producer behind the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia.
