Sept 24, 2019
BP Energy has until November to provide Ibama with clarifications on its planned exploratory activities at the Foz do Amazonas Basin. The environmental agency – which analyzes the license request to drill in the region – requests the review of accidental scenarios and the presentation of contracted vessels and monitoring system within the project’s individual emergency plan (IEP), among other information.
Filed in 2014, the process is one of those related to the region that continues unabated amid growing international pressure for the preservation of the Amazon.
In May, BP asked Ibama to indefinitely suspend the licensing of the FZA-M-59 block so that it could “conclusively” meet the requirements. “The company explains that it expects to“ combine the efforts of the well to be drilled in block FZA-M-59 with activities planned for the year 2021 in block Pau Brasil, also operated by BP and located in the Santos Basin ” , explained the oil company in a letter.
Ibama, however, denied the request, setting a deadline of six months to submit the required information. “Although no deadline has been set for the presentation of the necessary clarifications / supplements, it is understood that these should be forwarded as soon as possible in order to continue the environmental licensing”, justified the environmental agency.
Licensing in Foz do Amazonas is particularly delicate because it is a border region (in case of a leak, an international incident can be generated) and because it houses a reef system of over 50,000 km², which, according to researchers, may function as a biodiversity corridor between the Caribbean and the South Atlantic.
Last January – less than a year after the publication of the study that shed light on Amazonian corals – Ibama rejected a license application by Total to drill in five blocks in the mouth of the Amazon because it considered there were “deep uncertainties” related to the venture’s IEP.
Source: Brasil Energia Magazine
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