Brazil wants to be “fertile ground” for foreign investment in the energy sector, the country’s Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, said this Monday in New York. where he presents the country’s energy transition projects.
The government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wants to attract investments in transmission lines, in generation projects from renewable sources, such as wind, solar and green hydrogen, as well as biofuels and oil and gas.
Silveira stated, in an interview with Efe, that Brazil has everything necessary to be a global protagonist in the energy transition, recalling that the South American country already produces 88% of its electricity with renewable sourcesmainly from hydroelectric plants.
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One of the main investment projects promoted by the Brazilian government is in the transmission zonein which it hopes to raise 60,000 million reais (about 11,600 million euros) in the coming months, according to the head of Mines and Energy.
The minister stated that “Brazil has already decided that it will make a safe and inclusive energy transition,” but stressed that, to finance this process, it needs continue resorting to oil exploration.
Specifically, Silveira defended the plans of Petrobras, the Brazilian state oil company, to explore the existence of hydrocarbons in the marine basin at the mouth of the Amazon, which according to preliminary calculations could house important oil and gas reserves.
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He assured that the Brazilian people “have the right” to know the dimension “of the mineral potential that is buried in the land or in the sea, to be able to make sovereign decisions” about its exploration.
Last May, the Brazilian Environmental Institute (Ibama) denied Petrobras the granting of the environmental license necessary to begin drilling in that marine basin, located about 185 kilometers off the coast of the Amazon state of Amapá.
Petrobras appealed this decision and is currently awaiting a new decision from the environmental regulatory body, which expressed concern because it is “a sensitive region” with rich biodiversity and three protected areas.
Silveira defended that Ibama and the Ministry of the Environment must indicate “all applicable and necessary legal conditions” to authorize crude oil exploration by Petrobras, which must “comply with them with total environmental safety.”
Source: Observadora
