Brazil’s auction of oil and gas exploration blocks is “scientifically unsustainable, legally indefensible and morally unjustifiable”

More than 11 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent could be released.

PHOTO Credit: Fernando de Noronha, Rodolfo Barretto on Unsplash.

In an auction that took place today, Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency auctioned exploration rights for 172 oil and gas exploration blocks. The exploration blocks cover a total area of 146,000 square kilometres. Climate Action Network calls it a “doomsday auction”. 47 of the exploration blocks are offshore in the Equatorial Margin.

The first 19 blocks sold today were part of these 47 offshore blocks. In total 34 blocks were sold, bringing in US$180 million for the Brazilian government.

In November 2025, Brazil will be hosting this year’s UN climate meeting (COP30) in Belém. At COP30, we can anticipate Brazil focussing on forests and “natural climate solutions” and talking about “carbon neutrality” by 2050 — as a distraction from ever-increasing fossil fuel extractivism.

Energy transition through fossil fuels?

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, supports the country’s plans to become the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. He argues that Brazil needs the money from oil, “to use it to fund our energy transition, which will require a lot of money”.

This is obviously a nonsensical argument. The more oil that Brazil burns, the more expensive will be the energy transition. And in the last seven years, Brazil has spent only 0.06% of fossil fuel revenues on projects related to energy transition.

The Instituto ClimaInfo calculates that if the oil and gas in the 172 exploration blocks were extracted and burned, it could release greenhouse gas emissions of more than 11 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Legal appeals

Several legal appeals attempting to prevent the auction from taking place have been filed, by the Unified Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), the National Association of Petrobras Shareholders (ANAPETRO), the Instituto Internacional Arayara and also by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF).

“This auction is posing really serious and grave threats for biodiversity, communities and climate,” Nicole Figueiredo de Oliveira, the executive director of Instituto Internacional Arayara, told The Guardian.

The MPF is calling for a suspension of the auction until the following are carried out: a climate impact study, an environmental assessment, a study on traditional communities, and prior consultation with Indigenous Peoples. Some of the exploration blocks overlap with Indigenous territories or conservation areas, including marine reserves around the World Heritage Site of Fernando de Noronha.

MPF argues that going ahead with oil and gas exploration without these studies would be “scientifically unsustainable, legally indefensible and morally unjustifiable”.

FUP is opposed to the 47 oil blocks located in the Equatorial Margin. FUP argues that the auction is, “An affront to the public interest, energy sovereignty and national heritage.” In addition, FUP states, “the auction is being called without the minimum environmental guarantees, or consultation with traditional communities, in violation of ILO Convention 169”.

Last year, Brazil’s environmental agency, Ibama, denied Petrobras a license for exploratory drilling offshore in the mouth of the Amazon. Ibama referred to impacts on Indigenous communities and on the sensitive coastal ecosystem.

Indigenous and environmental opposition

The Council of Chieftains of the Indigenous People of Oiapoque (CCPIO) is an umbrella group that represents more than 60 Indigenous villages in the municipality of Oiapoque. (The river Oiapoque forms the border between Brazil and French Guiana.)

Edmilson dos Santos Oliveira is the chief of the Karipuna people and coordinator of the CCPIO. “We Indigenous people are being flattened by this process, we’re not being seen or heard,” Oliveira told The Guardian.

Nossas is one of the environmental organisations demanding that the auction be cancelled. Lucas Louback of Nossas told The Guardian that,

“Thousands of people are already saying no to oil exploration in the Amazon basin and the Brazilian government needs to listen. Just a few months away from hosting COP30, continuing to bet on oil is a glaring contradiction.

“The Amazon is dangerously close to a tipping point, and clinging to this model pushes Brazil and the world closer to climate collapse.”

Planet wreckers

On the same day that the auction took place in Brazil, President Lula was in Canada where he urged the G7 to commit to the “global energy transition”. And in Bonn, Brazil is leading the UN preparations for COP30 in Belém.

But it’s not just Brazil, of course, that will turn up to COP30 as a climate hypocrite.

A new report by Oil Change International find that four countries in the Global North: US, Canada, Norway, and Australia, are responsible for almost 70% of projected greenhouse gas emissions from new oil and gas expansion from 2025 to 2035.

New oil and gas development in these four countries could result in 32 billion tons of CO₂e emissions. The US is by far the biggest culprit, with a projected production of oil and gas between now and 2035 that could result in more than 26 billion tons of CO₂e emissions.

Clearly these rich countries should be setting an example by phasing out oil and gas production urgently, while helping to finance the transition away from fossil fuels in the Global South.

Oil Change International states that,

COP30 is . . . an opportunity for Brazil to initiate an honest global conversation on what these countries need from the global climate process in order to be able to transition, and on how rich countries must lead the way in a full, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout. As such, it could enable conditions for the Global South to transition while ensuring prosperity and development.

That sounds good. But it would be the first time in more than 30 years of UN climate negotiations that an “honest global conversation” has taken place.

I for one am not holding my breath.