Climate of the present, oil of the past

In fact, when it comes to the planet's climate, there really is no tomorrow. There isn't even today. Not like it was yesterday, when we started burning fossil fuels. “The climate of the 20th century no longer exists,” said the Met Office, the British meteorological service, in its annual report on the state of the climate in the United Kingdom. Diagnosis corroborated by Ecuadorian climatologist Raúl Cordero, who carries out various research in Antarctica and is currently a professor at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands.

"We are not going to recover, at least in any foreseeable future, the climate and atmosphere that we have already lost. There is an epidemic of extreme events around the world that are becoming increasingly intense and frequent," said Cordero, in an interview with the BBC. An epidemic that may not reach the refrigerated offices of the directors and presidents of oil companies and the offices of politicians, but that kills, destroys and compromises the future of Brazilians in the city and in the countryside, including the powerful national agribusiness.

So the question of billions and billions of dollars in stranded assets is obvious. If the climate changed due to a development model that generated this climate chaos, why do we insist on the old developmental logic of the last century under the argument of generating wealth that the fossil oil and gas industry has proven not to deliver? Or better yet, that it is only handed over to a small group of shareholders (in the case of Petrobras, a large part of them are not even from Brazil), while governments and society have to bear climate damage?

The “ghost” created by the return of oil imports

Even with only “indications of hydrocarbons” in hand, Magda Chambriard rushed to trumpet that the “discovery” on the coast of Amapá confirmed the potential of the Equatorial Margin. The executive already estimates based on “electrical and indicative profiles in rock” that in six or seven years – that is, 2032 or 2033 – production would begin in Block 59, even though it is emphasized that it cannot be said that it is a discovery on a commercial scale.

In the only scenario with any degree of optimism in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is in the 2030s that we will need to give a “hobby horse” to retreat from the inevitable exceeding the 1.5oC established in the Paris Agreement. But, instead of looking to the future, the president of Petrobras preferred to trigger an old ghost that defenders of oil exploration in Brazil “to the last drop” have been using since last year: the need to replenish the country's reserves, under penalty of becoming importers of crude oil again.

Magda headed the National Oil, Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANP) when Block 59 was auctioned in 2013. More than a decade later, when she assumed the presidency of Petrobras, it seems that exploring oil and gas in the area became a matter of honor for the executive. If BP and Total, who purchased the block together with the Brazilian state-owned company at the time, were unable to obtain a license from IBAMA to drill in the area and abandoned the project because of this, it would make Petrobras do so. And it would “open the gate” to the exploration of fossil fuels in Foz do Amazonas.

The delay in the economic development model

However, a lot has changed in the planet's climate in the 13 years that separate the purchase of Block 59 and the “discovery of hydrocarbons” in the Morpho well, as stated in the statement to the market made by Petrobras. With more and more carbon in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, climate change has intensified. Extreme events have become more frequent and intense.

This extra share of carbon in the atmosphere is encountering, this year, a recurring climate phenomenon, El Niño. However, in this new atmosphere, the phenomenon is potentiated into a “Super El Niño”, which becomes the “icing on the cake” of the climate crisis that is afflicting the world – an account that never enters the calculations of the oil and gas industry and the governments that insist on using it as a driver of development.

These same governments, all over the world, have been “sweating” since the end of February to balance their accounts precisely because of oil and gas. With the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran, the global fossil fuel market crashed, restricting supply and sending the prices of these commodities soaring. Result: rationing and more expensive energy.

In Brazil and several countries in the Global South, subsidies to maintain fossil fuel prices compromise resources that could go to health, education and security. The energy security usually associated with oil became a “hydrocarbon indicator”, like that found in Block 59. It became food insecurity. He became insecure about his own life.

In the end, it doesn't matter if Foz do Amazonas is an oil desert – after all, many of the almost 100 wells already drilled in the basin went dry or discovered reserves with no commercial value – or a new oil frontier. What is really at stake, in addition to the Stock Exchange game, is the maintenance of an economic and extractive development model, which enriches company shareholders – the current financial results of several oil companies, including Petrobras, prove this – and impoverishes the population. Even more so those who no longer have enough resources to live and who are most affected by the “21st century climate” with its recurring extreme events. This is not an indication: it is an observation.