Government oil corporations from Brazil, Colombia and Peru signed Thursday, November 22, an agreement in Lima, capital of Peru, to jointly invest in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in the Peruvian Amazon.
The three corporations, PetroPeru, Ecopetrol and Petrobras will hold an equal share of the undertaking beginning with exploration tasks in an area of 5.7 million hectares in the Peruvian jungle to the north of the country next to Colombia.
Javier Gutierrez Ecopetrol CEO said at the ceremony he was proud that the first overseas incursion of Colombia's oil company was in neighboring Peru together with other regional companies.
Petrobras will be the operator and responsible for assessing the hydrocarbons potential of the Amazon basin in Peru. Peru has extensive gas resources in the south which are being exploited and Colombia also has oil and coal.
Petroperu is Peru's leading corporation and is involved in upstream and downstream operations and its main competitor in the country is Repsol-YPF.
Brazil's Rainforest
Environmentalists all over the globe are concerned that the Brazilian Amazon, one of the last untouched areas of the world's largest wilderness will be spoiled by oil prospection. Brazil has announced plans to search for oil and natural gas in the country's remote western Amazon.
Brazil's National Petroleum Agency, ANP, plans to invest an estimated US$ 30 million to look for oil and gas in Acre, an Amazon state bordering Bolivia, the government news agency Agência Brasil announced Saturday, October 20.
ANP director, Getúlio Silveira Leite, told a congressional committee that the work in Acre is part a broader push to find oil in the Amazon, according to the official news agency.
"We must increase research in the region to discover the petroleum potential of the nine Amazon states," Silveira Leite said.
But environmental officials said no study had been done to assess how the search will affect the Amazon. The region covers some 4 million square kilometers (1,544 sq miles) but its natural resources are under constant pressure from loggers, miners and farmers.
"It's necessary to examine how this will be done, on what scale and in what areas," said João Paulo Capobianco, the Environment Ministry's executive secretary. "In theory, there are methodologies and technologies that allow this activity without environmental damage."
The Acre state Federation of Industries has endorsed the project, but some in the region question whether the government will take care to preserve the environment.
"Development brings damage," Acre congressman Marcelo Serafim said. "It destroyed the Atlantic forest, it ruined much of the Pantanal (wetlands), and that's not what we want or defend."
But Serafim added: "If the Brazilian government and the world want the Amazon preserved, the world has to give us conditions to preserve the Amazon. And it hasn't."
Brazilian government managed oil company Petrobras currently produces oil and gas in the Amazon city of Coari. The federal government is also building a pipeline through the rainforest to carry the gas to the Amazonas capital of Manaus, a city of 1.5 million.
Mercopress
