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BRAZIL’S environmental regulator has rejected a licence for a controversial offshore oil drilling project near the mouth of the Amazon River.
The proposed project drew strong opposition from activists who warned of its potential for damaging the area.
The agency’s president, Rodrigo Agostinho, highlighted environmental concerns in announcing the decision on Wednesday evening to turn down the state-run oil company Petrobras’s request to drill the FZA-M-59 block.
He cited “a group of technical inconsistencies” in the company’s application.
With Brazil’s existing production set to peak in coming years, Petrobras has sought to secure more reserves off Brazil’s northern coast. The company earmarked almost half its $6 billion (£4.83bn) exploration budget for the area.
Mr Agostinho wrote in his decision: “There is no doubt that Petrobras was offered every opportunity to remedy critical points of its project, but that it still presents worrisome inconsistencies for the safe operation in a new exploratory frontier with high socio environmental vulnerability.”
The unique and biodiverse area is home to little-studied swaths of mangroves and a coral reef and activists and experts had said that the project risked leaks that could imperil the sensitive environment.
Eighty civil society and environmental organisations, including World Wildlife Fund Brazil and Greenpeace, had called for the licence to be rejected pending an in-depth study.
Caetano Scannavino, co-ordinator of Health and Happiness, an Amazon non-profit group that supports sustainable projects in the Tapajos basin, congratulated Mr Agostinho on Twitter “for not succumbing to pressure, asking for more studies and prioritising science in the service of the collective.”
The Climate Observatory, a network of environmental non-profits, also cheered the decision, saying that “Agostinho is protecting a virtually unknown ecosystem and maintains the coherence of the Lula government, which has promised in its discourse to be guided by the fight against the climate crisis.”
