At first glance, the two announcements this month by Brazilian oil-industry regulators in connection with Chevron’s offshore oil spill last year appear contradictory.

On one hand, the National Oil Agency (ANP) fined Chevron R$35.16 million ($17.4 million) for the spill, in which 3,700 barrels of crude escaped from the ocean floor in the Frade field off southeastern Brazil. Yet the agency also filed a court appeal aimed at allowing Chevron to resume production, and drill-rig operator Transocean to continue exploration.

In fact, the ANP likely had complementary goals in mind. The first was to close the book on the Chevron spill, for which the oil giant already has been fined R$60 million ($29.7 million) by Ibama, the enforcement arm of Brazil’s Environment Ministry. The second, by way of the court appeal, was to assert regulatory control of the oil sector and prevent oil-production disruption at a time when the country’s oil output has been dropping.

Ocean-floor blowout

Last year’s spill occurred in connection with exploratory drilling by Chevron and Transocean. Chevron admitted soon after crude was detected seeping from the sea floor that it had underestimated the pressure in an oil reservoir it was tapping and thus had not fed heavy enough mud into the borehole.

An ANP report, issued this July, said this miscalculation resulted in an underground blowout that fractured the ocean bottom, causing oil to leak from seven fissures, each roughly 250 meters (820 feet) long, near a Chevron exploratory well. The report blamed Chevron in its capacity as concession holder, and exculpated Transocean, its rig operator.

Though Chevron continued oil production in the Frade field after November’s exploratory-drilling accident, it voluntarily suspended offshore production in March while determining the source of new seepage it detected in a half-mile-long sea floor fissure not far from the site of last year’s spill. But at a July 19 press conference, ANP president Magda Chambriard announced that “Chevron has asked the ANP if it could resume production in the Frade field, and I don’t anticipate any reason for us not to allow the company to do so.”

And on Sept. 14, she told reporters that any court ruling suspending Transocean’s drilling activities here would adversely affect oil production. That’s because Transocean currently operates seven offshore drilling wells for the state oil company Petrobras, and one well apiece for Italy’s ENI, BP, and the Texas-based Vanco Oil & Gas.

Chambriard was taking aim at an injunction issued July 31 by a federal appeals court in Rio de Janeiro state. The injunction bars both Chevron and Transocean from engaging in oil drilling, production, and transport activities in light of the November and March offshore leaks. It requires any such activities that are underway to cease within 31 days of the order’s publication date—a period that ends Oct. 4. While Chevron has suspended its oil exploration and production activities, Transocean has continued exploration drilling for its other clients here.

The ANP’s apparent eagerness to allow Chevron to resume production and head off a forced suspension of Transocean’s activities led it this month to take an unusual step. It filed an appeal with the Superior Justice Tribunal, Brazil’s highest appeals court aside from the Supreme Court, to overturn the injunction issued against Chevron and Transocean by the federal appeals court in Rio de Janeiro state.

ANP persisting

ANP’s appeal to a higher tribunal came after the lower-ranking appeals court on Aug. 28 rejected a petition by Chevron and Transocean to withdraw the injunction. On Sept. 12, the chief justice of the Superior Justice Tribunal rejected the ANP’s petition, but the ANP says it will request a definitive ruling from the entire 15-member body.

Environmentalists and scientists criticize the ANP for lodging appeals in support of Chevron and Transocean’s position.

“With oil production declining and likely to slide further if Chevron can’t resume production and if Transocean has to suspend drilling, the ANP intervened on their behalf in the courts to help boost oil output,” says Ricardo Baitelo, energy campaign coordinator of Greenpeace Brazil. “But in doing so, the agency wasn’t acting as a conscientious regulator concerned with the environmental repercussions of letting two companies that had been technically incompetent and negligent to continue to work here less than a year after a blowout they caused fractured the ocean floor and resulted in a major spill.”

David Zee, a professor of oceanography at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, and a specialist in coastal environmental impact assessments, agrees: “The ANP, by defending Chevron and Transocean in the courts, showed confusion about its role as a regulator. It should not be fighting their court battles, but developing more rigorous rules to make oil exploration and production safer, something it has been lax about doing.”