Lula pushes hard for drilling in northern waters

Rigs like this might begin appearing farther north in Brazilian waters. The country’s president wants to permit exploratory drilling 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the Amazon Delta. (Photo by Ranimiro Lotufo Neto/Shutterstock)

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has ratcheted up his controversial efforts to allow oil and gas exploration in a deepwater basin off the country’s northern coast. Lula has long advocated exploration in the so-called Mouth of the Amazon Basin, located some 500 kilometers (300 miles) seaward of the Amazon River Delta. Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, has been trying since 2021 to obtain a license for exploratory drilling in one of six contiguous oil and gas concession blocks it owns in the basin. It says the region’s geology is similar to deepwater basins off Guyana and Suriname where major oil and gas deposits have been found. Petrobras officials say that if they locate and exploit oil deposits on the scale of those in Guyana and Suriname, Brazil would rise in the ranking of world oil producers from eighth to fourth. They contend such finds could help... Read more →