Tiakina Te Moana

MONDAY, JUNE 28, 2010

Petrobras less than spotless on the enviornment and indigenous rights

Petrobras, the Brazilian petrochemical giant which the New Zealand Government has done a deal with to explore deep off the country’s North Island East Coast, has a less than spotless environmental record.

At about the same time as the Brazilian state-controlled company was sewing up New Zealand’s first petroleum exploration permit over the Raukumara Basin, Petrobras was announcing that it had successfully controlled an oil leak at an offshore platform in the Campos Basin.

The P-47 platform leaked an estimated 1500 litres (396 gallons) of oil at Marlin field during preparations to transfer oil to a ship, Petrobras said in an emailed statement reported by upstreammeidaonline.com.

A helicopter and four boats assisted with clean up efforts, it reported the company as saying, and the spill was immediately controlled. Campos Basin comprises 7015 sq km and is located offshore the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Sant, according to Brazilian Government information.

While this spill was relatively small, Petrobras has been on the radar of environmental watchdogs for a number years following a series of incidents dating as far back as 1984, according to Crocodyl, a collaboration between non-profit organizations such as Center for Corporate Policy, CorpWatch, Corporate Research Project, other contributing organisations and individual contributors from around the world.” See http://www.crocodyl.org/

New Zealand Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee may not have known about the Campos basin incident when he announced on 2 June 2010 that the government had awarded New Zealand's first petroleum exploration permit over the Raukumara Basin off the North Island's East Coast to Petrobras International Braspetro B.V.

"Petrobras is an international giant in this industry and a world leader in development of offshore drilling technology and production. Given Petrobras's expertise, and financial and technical pedigree, this is an exciting step into areas of New Zealand until now unexplored," Mr Brownlee said at the time.

He also noted that the announcement represented a major step forward in the relationship between New Zealand and Brazil.

"Petrobras's investment will add a substantial new dimension to the economic relationship between New Zealand and Brazil. This is a very welcome development," Mr Brownlee said in his statement.

However, it would appear that his officials must have overlooked a number of other incidents which have raised concerns.

For example, Crocodyl in a chronology of Petrobras problems notes that the company owned the largest floating oil platform in the world, called the "P36", until it sunk in 2001, after several explosions killed eleven workers. The estimated loss was $350 Million in USD to the company.

However, incidents involving loss of life go back even further, the Crocodyl chronology noted as follows (see quoted items below):

* In August 1984, 36 workers drowned and 17 were injured in an explosion and fire on a Petrobras oil-drilling platform in the Campos Basin off Brazil.

* In November, 1995 one person died and five were wounded in a Petrobras pipeline fire in Sao Paulo.

* In December, 1998 a fire at Petrobras's Gabriel Passos Refinery in Minas Gerais killed three workers.

* In January, 2001 two workers died from a fire on a Petrobras offshore natural gas platform in Campos Basin.

* In March, 2001 11 people were killed after explosions rocked the world's biggest offshore oil platform. Days later, the platform sank.

Environment and product safety:

* In 2000, a broken Petrobras pipeline resulted in the biggest oil spill in 25 years -- four million liters (1 million gallons), spilled in the Iguacu River. The government fined the company $100 million -- less than two days revenues.

* Just months before, a ruptured pipeline at a Petrobras refinery in Rio de Janeiro's scenic Guanabara Bay resulted in a 350,000 gallon (1.3 million litre) oil spill into the bay, killing hundreds of fish, birds and plants.

* Six months after the Iguacu River spill, a Petrobras refinery near Curitiba in the southern state of Parana resulted in another oil leak, the company's sixth environmental accident in 2000.

* On March 15, 2001, Petrobras' biggest offshore platform, P-36, suffered two major explosions and sank ten days later. The incident resulted in 11 deaths.”

More recently, Crocodyl noted, in 2004,Petrobras reported finding an oil leak on the sea floor in Marlin Sul.

“In 2006, after losing a court dispute it had initiated, Petrobras announced it would abandon plans to build a road into an environmentally sensitive region of the Amazon - Yasuni National Park. “The company had already built a road through a buffer zone right up to the edge of the park and the company asserted that it has not given up on oil development within the park, saying it will employ helicopters to access the site.”

Brian Keane of Land is Life, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based indigenous rights group is quoted as saying: “Allowing Petrobras to drill in Yasuni would be a gross violation of the rights of the Huaorani and Taromenane peoples.” See http://www.landislife.org/

Petrobras has invested heavily in the development of biofuels. Biodiesel is available at more than 500 Petrobras stations in Brazil.

It should be noted that biofuels in Brazil have been become extremely politically sensitive over the replacement of tropical forests with feedstock crops, depriving indigenous peoples of land rights.

The issues surround Petrobras and indigenous rights are of increasing interest in New Zealand, where the Ngati Porou tribe on the North Island’s East Coast has questioned the licence.

So the bottom line here is: What was the New Zealand Government thinking, what will be the ultimate cost to the New Zealand taxpayer, and how does this fit in with the country’s increasingly besmirched “clean, green” image?