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 offset declines in offshore-oil production elsewhere in Brazilian waters during the next decade.

Lula, a former union leader whose support for rainforest conservation is accompanied by a pro-jobs enthusiasm for fossil-fuel energy development, agrees. “We are not going to throw away any opportunity to grow our economy,” he said in November.

Lula stepped up the pressure early this month, reportedly promising newly elected Senate President Davi Alcolumbre—whose state, Amapá, stands to receive royalties from large-scale oil and gas production off its coast—to “unlock” the undersea hydrocarbon reserves. On Feb. 12, the president went further, calling for action by Ibama, the arm of the Environment and Climate Change Ministry that is reviewing the Petrobras request for an environmental license to begin exploratory drilling.

“We need Ibama to authorize Petrobras to carry out the [exploratory] research,” Lula said in a widely publicized radio interview with an Amapá radio station. “...Whether we try to produce oil later is another conversation. What we can’t do is stay locked in this blah, blah, blah, back-and-forth with Ibama, a government body that looks like an anti-government body.”

Environmentalists condemned the remarks, arguing the president had improperly criticized an administratively autonomous federal body to influence its decision-making, something he previously hadn’t been known to do. “Lula’s comments were totally inappropriate because they revealed his political interference in the technical, environmental decisions of Ibama, a totally independent federal agency,” says Shingueo Watanabe Jr., a senior researcher at the Talanoa Institute, a nonprofit Brazilian think tank.

The National Association of Environmental Career Specialists (Ascema Nacional), the labor group representing all 4,900 federal environmental employees, including the 2,900 employees of Ibama, also denounced Lula’s comments. “Any type of political pressure that seeks to interfere in the technical work of Ibama is unacceptable, especially when it is a decision that could result in irreversible environmental impacts,” Ascema Nacional said in a prepared statement issued Feb. 12, the day of the radio interview. “His comments disrespect Ibama’s fundamental role in defending the public interest, its main objective, independent of the current government.”

Jean Paul Prates, who served as president of Petrobras during 2023-2024, agrees: “Lula’s radio interview was quite unfortunate because although there is nothing wrong with the government having a dialogue with Ibama, there is nothing worse than accusing Ibama of taking steps to delay or deny a license to intentionally impede economic development.”

O Estado de S. Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest-circulation newspapers, published a scathing Feb. 14 editorial entitled “The Blah-Blah-Blah that defeats Brazil.” Said the editorial: “The president’s public elbowing [of Ibama], correct in its content, but stylistically crude and reckless, spread embers where there was already fire.”

Petrobras began seeking exploratory-drilling rights in the Mouth of the Amazon Basin in 2013, when a consortium comprising Total [now named TotalEnergies] of France, the United Kingdom-based BP and Petrobras bought concessions for five contiguous exploration blocks there, with BP buying its own contiguous block, Block 59, at the same government-run auction.

Also at the auction, a seventh contiguous block was bought by Enauta Energia, a Brazilian company, and two outlying blocks were purchased by a Brazilian company now called Prio Coral. Thus, nine concession blocks in all have been bought to date in the Mouth of the Amazon Basin. The government, however, has yet to permit exploratory drilling in any of them.

Ibama denied a drilling license for the consortium’s five blocks as well as for BP’s Block 59 in 2017, mainly due to concern that the socio-environmental impacts of a major oil spill could not be handled adequately. Because they failed to get the Ibama license, Total and BP sold their shares in five concession blocks to Petrobras in July 2021. Petrobras also bought BP’s wholly owned Block 59.

Afterwards, Petrobras asked Ibama for a drilling license only for Block 59. In May 2023, however, Ibama denied the request, largely due to the concerns that drove its 2017 decision.

Looming large among those concerns is the fact that the Mouth of the Amazon Basin lies off the world’s largest contiguous coastal mangrove forest, much of it federally protected. The mangrove stands extend south from Amapá state, to Pará and part of Maranhão state. (See "Brazil adds to Amazon-region mangrove protection" —EcoAméricas, January 2025.) Mangroves have an exceptional ability to sequester carbon, and they provide rich habitat for marine life that underpins the diets of Amapá and Pará Indigenous communities.

Another concern being weighed by Ibama is that these blocks lie just north of a unique and recently discovered network of coral reefs. These reefs are located not in nutrient-rich tropical shallows, but, rather, in deeper, nutrient-starved waters made murky on account of sediments conveyed into the ocean by the Amazon River. Scientists say the unusual reefs’ survival in seemingly inhospitable conditions might help reveal how corals elsewhere will react to the escalating impacts of climate change. (See "Experts say oil plans threaten unique reef" —EcoAméricas, March 2018.)

These factors weren’t the only ones underlying Ibama 2023 denial of Petrobras’s initial request to explore Block 59. Another was concern about the large extent of coastline that a spill in the Mouth of the Amazon Basin could affect. The northwesterly-moving ocean currents in the Mouth of the Amazon Basin are stronger than those elsewhere in Brazil where Petrobras operates offshore. An oil spill in the Mouth of the Amazon blocks could quickly reach not only the coast of Amapá, but also the coastlines of Brazil’s northern neighbors Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname, experts say.

“The combination of these four factors—the mangrove forests, their proximity to Indigenous communities, the Mouth of the Amazon Basin’s unique coral reefs and its strong ocean currents—were the reason Ibama denied Petrobras the license to drill there in 2023,” Suely Araújo, Ibama’s president from 2016-2019, told EcoAméricas this month.

Added Araújo, now senior public policy specialist at The Climate Observatory, a Brazil-based network of nonprofits: “Given these factors, Ibama didn’t think Petrobras had the operational expertise needed to manage the ecological repercussions of an oil spill in such a socio-environmentally sensitive basin.”

Petrobras asked Ibama to reconsider its May 2023 decision, saying it would allay the concerns about oil-spill response. But in October 2024, two dozen Ibama technical analysts recommended against an exploratory-drilling license. They said, “Petrobras did not provide a viable alternative to satisfactorily mitigate against the loss of biodiversity caused by an oil spill.”

Ibama President Rodolfo Agostinho did not reject the Petrobras application outright. He instead requested more documentation that would address the agency’s concerns.

Petrobras answered in Dec. 2024 by presenting Ibama with plans for a R$150 million (US$26 million) oil-spill-response base near the coastal town of Oiapoque in Amapá state, 175 kms (109 miles) from Block 59. Now being built, the base is slated to have helicopters, oil-spill-cleanup vessels, and a center for treatment of oil-tainted marine animals. Says Araújo: “Petrobras’s Oiapoque base should facilitate, but won’t guarantee, that Ibama will give Petrobras the license.”

Prates says continued Ibama consideration of the drilling request would require the oil company to engage in a simulated oil spill at Block 59. The exercise would involve moving a drilling rig there—though not using it—and the participation of 1,500 Petrobras employees, Ibama staff and local government authorities.

Reports say rejection likely

As of press time, however, there was reporting suggesting that deliberations within Ibama were not going Petrobras’ way. News media citing unnamed sources in the agency said technical staff has decided to again recommend against a drilling license due partly to concern that, even with the planned coastal base in place, spill-response would not be adequate.

Critics of the drilling request point out that oil and gas from the basin would largely be used in Brazil. That, they say, would boost domestic fossil-fuel use and make it harder for Brazil to meet Lula’s newly strengthened commitment to cut carbon emissions by 59% to 67% by 2035 compared to 2005 emission levels. They also object to the prospect of Brazil boosting oil production on a global scale, forecasting that major discoveries would unleash oil-development pressure that would be hard to control.

“Should Petrobras find and produce oil in that basin, foreign oil companies will flock there in droves to win concessions, greatly increasing the chances of an oil spill,” Ilan Zugman of 350.org, a global environmental nonprofit, told EcoAméricas. “Even if Petrobras, as it argues, needs more oil to fuel economic growth in the next decade, why does it have to look for it in such a socio-environmentally-sensitive area?”

Ibama President Agostinho has denied being pressured by Lula to grant the license and has not provided a deadline for deciding whether to grant it. Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva, who supports decarbonization of the energy sector, said such a decision rests solely with Ibama. Independent experts doubt Ibama would grant a license to drill in Block 59 until the coastal base is completed and a spill simulation is conducted and analyzed—by June at the earliest, they say.

Environmentalists speculate Lula hopes Ibama will grant the Petrobras permit as far in advance as possible of November’s COP30 climate conference, which Brazil is hosting in Belém, so as not to tarnish his reputation on the global stage. The president has won wide praise as an environmental leader, in particular for dramatically reducing deforestation rates in his first two terms (from 2003-2011), and in his current, third term, which began in 2023.

But green advocates argue that even if a license is granted soon, Lula’s image in world environmental circles will take a hit.

“Lula would probably prefer Petrobras to get the exploratory drilling license [for Block 59] from Ibama in the first half of 2025,” says Adriana Ramos, a public policy specialist at the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), a Brazilian nonprofit. “But the timing of the license will not change the fact that, under Lula, Brazil is deciding to open a new area of oil and gas exploitation at a time when COP30’s main challenge will be to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, a contradiction that won’t disappear.”

Experts weigh in

On Feb. 19 over a dozen prominent experts signed a statement criticizing Lula for pressuring Ibama to greenlight the offshore drilling in northern waters. They also took issue with his government’s decision, announced the same day, to join the OPEC+ group of major oil-exporting countries. Brazil’s participation will be limited to OPEC+’s Charter of Cooperation, a forum for discussion. It will not take part in OPEC+ decision-making nor be subject to the organization’s oil-production decisions. But experts say the move underscores the country’s emerging status as a leading oil state.

Signers of the statement included Ricardo Galvão, president of Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, a government research agency; former Environment Minister Carlos Minc; and climatologist Carlos Nobre, cochair of the nongovernmental Scientific Panel for the Amazon.

“To run over Ibama...or to say that more oil will make the energy transition more viable, is unacceptable,” said the Feb. 19 statement. “It’s pure cynicism.”