The conflicting goals in Brazil: between protecting the Amazon and extracting much more oil

RIO DE JANEIRO — Through his office window, the director of Brazil’s state oil company surveyed the cluttered landscape of Rio de Janeiro.

Behind, on the other side of the city’s ruined skyscrapers, was the imposing statue of Christ the Redeemer.

The hawks surrounded an overflowing pile of garbage.

Plumes of smoke rose from a fire that broke out in a hillside favela.

Your company, Petrobrasis planning to increase oil production so rapidly that it could become the world’s third-largest producer by 2030, a transformation that it believes could play a role in poverty reduction that dots the landscape.

This, even when your country positions itself as a leader in the fight against this phenomenon climate changewhich, of course, is primarily fueled by the burning of oil and other fossil fuels.

Petrobras already pumps approximately the same amount of crude oil per year ExxonMobilaccording to Rystad Energy, a market research firm.

In the next few years, it is expected to surpass national oil companies China, Russia and Kuwait, only at the start Saudi Arabia and Iran pumping more than Petrobras by 2030.

It’s a huge situation for the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silvabetter known simply as Lula, who has emerged as the pre-eminent world leader on climate issues.

Apparently, in recent years Lula has come to believe that climate change is a major consequence Factor of poverty and inequalitywhich over decades of his political career he promised to eradicate.

Since being elected in 2022, Lula has drastically reduced the deforestation in the Amazon and has overseen notable development of renewable energy.

But he will also preside over a Petrobras oil boom and a period of rising gas imports, both of which will ease Brazil’s growing hunger for cheap flights, heartier diets and air-conditioned homes.

Contradictory as it may seem, it’s right, said Petrobras CEO Jean Paul Prates, perched atop his company’s gleaming headquarters.

“We will not give up this prerogative,” he said, “because others are not making their sacrifices either.”

It’s a topic that haunts global efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Industrialized countries like it UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, which have become economic superpowers by emitting enormous quantities of greenhouse gases, remain the largest producers and consumers of fossil fuels per capita in the world.

And if they don’t stop, why should Brazil?

Lula’s top advisor on climate change, Ana Toni, a longtime director of several nonprofit groups, said Petrobras would ideally reduce its oil production and invest more in renewable energy, essentially becoming a new kind of company.

But he echoed Prates and said that until the whole world acts together, with the richest at the helm, developing countries they would resist make your own sacrifices.

Like many in Brazil, Toni cited the cautionary example of his neighbor Colombiawhose president has embarked on an ambitious plan, a first for any oil-producing country, to phase out fossil fuel production.

“Colombia’s courageous decision is seen by the market as a source of economic insecurity. “It’s really the worst case scenario,” she said.

“I would like countries richer than ours to have a real dialogue about taking these measures and not leave everything to us vulnerable.”

Subject to tension

This tension has dominated years of climate negotiations and will once again be at the center of this year’s UN-sponsored summit in Azerbaijan in November.

There, negotiators from nearly every nation in the world hope to tackle the thorny question of how richer countries can funnel more money to poorer ones to help them adopt.r cleaner energy sources and adapt to the effects of climate change.

After Azerbaijan, the next host country of the UN climate summit will be Brazil.

The summit will take place in Belém, a city on the edge of the Amazon, near a place where Petrobras had proposed exploring for oil.

But in one of the few cases where the Brazilian government restricted the oil industry, the idea was blocked.

Prates said Petrobras has appealed the decision.

Meanwhile, Petrobras plans to spend more than 7 billion dollars over the next five years in exploring potential offshore drilling sites along other stretches of the Brazilian coast to boost its already growing production.

Petrobras, like many other oil and gas companies, internally predicts that demand for its products will remain stubbornly high.

As a result, society operates under a radically different set of assumptions than those envisioned by the International Energy Agency and others who claim that demand for oil has already reached the peak or is close to it.

That leaves countries like Brazil in a sort of gray zone where everything gets done, said Mercedes Bustamante, a professor and ecologist at the University of Brasilia and a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, an independent group of scientists.

two tips

Brazil is developing both renewable energy and fossil fuels.

This year it joined OPEC, the global oil cartel, as an observer, although it plans to host global UN climate negotiations next year.

By 2030 it will be the fifth largest oil producer in the world, according to Rystad data.

This dynamic is also reflected in forests, Bustamante explained.

Deforestation in the Amazon has slowed, but at the same time it is increasing in the Cerrado, a vast savannah that covers much of central Brazil.

“Having both is an important part of Brazil’s political DNA,” said Oliver Stuenkel, a professor at the Fundação Getulio Vargas School of International Relations in Sao Paulo.

“We will be a green superpower, yes, but we will not take unnecessary risks. “This means preparing for a world where oil will play an important role for a long time and the transition will take longer than expected.”

Prates said he talks to Lula every two weeks and pushes him to understand that the transition away from fossil fuels must be “wisely slow.”

“This means not being slow because we don’t want to make a transition, but slow because we have to match the expectations of the market for oil, gas and their derivatives,” he said.

“Petrobras will get to the last drop of oil, the same way Saudi Arabia or the Emirates will.”

Petrobras has some important long-term advantages, even if oil demand is at its peak.

Oil production from Brazil’s offshore sites near Rio and Sao Paulo costs about $35 a barrel, well below the international benchmark of $90.

This is partly because its production requires it less energy, making it slightly cleaner and more desirable for some emissions-conscious buyers.

Lula’s government also faces a polarized electorate that, according to recent polls, generally does not consider climate change a voting issue.

“Half the population doesn’t have access to treated wastewater,” Stuenkel said.

“Brazil has a very different set of public demands than richer countries. “There is still a long way to go to convince Brazilian voters that a painful reorganization of society is necessary to avoid climate change.”

However, Lula cares deeply about the issue, said Toni, his climate adviser.

The world depends on Brazil’s leadership on this issue and it has made ambitious promises to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Those the promises are more ambitious, He made sure to point out that those from the United States or many other countries who have a higher standard of living than Brazil.

He says it’s a good sign that Brazil is under pressure to reconsider its oil expansion.

For her, it means that Brazil has been so successful on the deforestation front that people are demanding higher standards.

But all this will be in vain if the most important players do not reflect this ambition.

“Even if Brazil stopped producing oil tomorrow,” he said.

“The United States, Russia and others will not stop.”

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