Deep in the Amazon rainforest, many miles from anywhere, the Brazilian energy giant Petrobras is producing oil and natural gas from an industrial development carved out of the landscape that includes 70 working oil wells, five drilling rigs, an airport, two river ports and lodging for 1,800 workers.
This remote outpost is known as the Urucu Oil Province, and, believe it or not, state-controlled Petrobras says it’s an example of “sustainable development.”
Flaring gas at Urucu: Is this sustainable development?
This is sustainable only if you believe that the oil and gas will last forever, that climate change isn’t a worry, and that drilling for fossil fuels in one of the world’s most unspoiled and biodiverse regions makes sense.
Here’s the surprise, though: Petrobras’s Urucu project may not be sustainable in the strictest sense, but it is about as environmentally benign as an oil-drilling project in a rainforest can be. That may be damning with faint praise, but I have to confess that I came to like Urucu after visiting today with a group of reporters on an six-day tour of Brazil.
Urucu has issues, to be sure, but it is generating thousands of jobs, contributing considerable wealth to a developing nation in the form of taxes and royalties, and generating electricity in ways that are cleaner and cheaper than the current alternative. [click to continue…]
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