SAO PAULO (Reuters) – The leader of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government in Brazil’s Congress announced on Thursday he was leaving his party as the fallout of environmental agency Ibama’s decision to block an Amazon oil project roiled Lula’s coalition.
Ibama, late on Wednesday, said it would block a request by state-run oil giant Petrobras to drill at the Amazon mouth near Amapa, in a much-awaited decision that followed a technical recommendation by Ibama experts to reject the project.
The decision by Ibama, which is overseen by Lula’s Environment Minister, the globally recognized environmentalist Marina Silva, has opened a major fault-line within Lula’s governing coalition.
Lula, who hails from the poor northeast, has staked his international reputation on reversing environmental back-sliding under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. But he is also under pressure to deliver much-needed growth to poor, under-developed regions in the north and northeast, and wants state-owned Petrobras to be an engine of that growth.
Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, who represents the state of Amapa, said Ibama had taken a decision with major economic impact for the state without taking into account the views of the people from Amapa or its state government.
“We’ll fight against this decision,” Rodrigues wrote on Twitter, adding that “the people of Amapa want to have the right to be heard”. He later announced he was departing his party, the center-left Sustainability Network, in light of the decision.
The Sustainability Network was founded in the early 2010s by Silva, the environment minister, who appointed Ibama head Rodrigo Agostinho.
Agostinho told GloboNews TV on Thursday that Petrobras would be allowed to file a new request to drill in the region, but noted that studies presented by the firm to date were not enough for the move to be cleared.
Shares in Petrobras, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, were down 0.5% on Thursday.
Neither Lula’s office, nor the environment ministry immediately responded to requests for comment.
Environmental groups celebrated Ibama’s decision.
In a statement, Greenpeace said Ibama had underlined the need for “a fair energy transition, instead of insisting on yet another oil exploration frontier in the context of the climate crisis.” Environmental group Observatorio do Clima said Ibama had “postponed the end of the world.”
Yet another Lula ally from Amapa, Senator Davi Alcolumbre of the center-right Union Brazil party, was less complimentary.
“It was disrespectful to the people of Amapa,” he said of the Ibama ruling. “We’ll fight, backed by technical, legal and reasonable criteria, to revert this erroneous and unfair decision.”
(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes; Editing by Steven Grattan and Chizu Nomiyama)
