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- Brazil’s environmental regulatory agency, Ibama, announced last Friday that it was denying French oil company Total license to drill for oil near the Amazon Reef.
- Greenpeace announced earlier this year that a team of scientists onboard one of the environmental group’s ships had documented a reef formation under one of Total’s drilling blocks, contradicting Total’s Environmental Impact Assessment, which stated that the closest reef formation was 8 kilometers away.
- In a statement about the rejection of the environmental licenses Total was seeking in order to begin drilling in the Foz do Amazonas Basin, Ibama president Suely Araújo said that there were “deep uncertainties related to the Individual Emergency Plan (PEI) of the enterprise, aggravated by the possibility of eventual oil leakage affecting the biogenic reefs present in the region and marine biodiversity more broadly.”
Brazil’s environmental regulatory agency, Ibama, announced last Friday that it was denying French oil company Total license to drill for oil near the Amazon Reef.
The reef system, discovered off the coast of Amapá state in northern Brazil in 2016, is known as the Amazon Reef because it lies in the turgid waters of the Atlantic Ocean close to the mouth of the Amazon River. The system of corals, sponges, and a colorful marine algae that resembles coral called rhodoliths extends from French Guiana to Brazil’s Maranhão State and encompasses 9,500 square kilometers (nearly 3,700 square miles).
Fabiano Thompson of Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, who was part of the team of scientists that made the discovery, told Mongabay at the time that the oceanographic conditions of the Amazon Reef are not found anywhere else on the planet, making it an entirely unique ecosystem.
Total sought to drill for oil in the Foz do Amazonas Basin, which has been estimated to contain as much as 14 billion barrels of oil. The French oil giant was leading a group of companies, including the UK’s BP and Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras, that acquired the rights to five exploration blocks in the basin in a 2013 auction. BP is reportedly still trying to secure a license to drill in the Foz do Amazonas Basin on its own.
Greenpeace announced earlier this year that a team of scientists onboard one of the environmental group’s ships had documented a reef formation under one of Total’s drilling blocks, contradicting Total’s Environmental Impact Assessment, which stated that the closest reef formation was 8 kilometers away.
In a statement about the rejection of the environmental licenses Total was seeking in order to begin drilling in the Foz do Amazonas Basin, Ibama president Suely Araújo said that there were “deep uncertainties related to the Individual Emergency Plan (PEI) of the enterprise, aggravated by the possibility of eventual oil leakage affecting the biogenic reefs present in the region and marine biodiversity more broadly.”
According to the statement, another factor that led to the license denial was the fact that many of the problems previously identified by Ibama in technical documents submitted by Total “were not remedied.” Ibama rejected Total’s environmental impact study for a third time in August 2017, for instance, because the company had failed to address concerns over potential impacts on marine mammals, sea turtles, and birds and had not improved its oil spill dispersion modeling or risk forecasting.
Greenpeace, which published the first underwater photos of the Amazon Reef last year, welcomed the decision by Ibama. “This announcement is a stunning victory for people power, and further evidence that the age of oil is on its way out,” Thiago Almeida, Climate and Energy campaigner for Greenpeace Brazil, said in a statement. “More than two million Amazon Reef defenders from all around the world stood up against Total’s reckless plans to drill for oil near this unique and biologically significant area, and today Ibama did the right thing in denying Total its licence to drill.”
You can listen to marine biologist and director of Greenpeace USA’s oceans campaigns John Hocevar talk about the discovery of the Amazon Reef and what it was like to be part of the expedition that photographed the reef for the first time in a June 2017 episode of the Mongabay Newscast.
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