The well will be drilled on the Brazilian equatorial margin, home to the world’s largest continuous strip of mangroves and the Great Amazon Reef System. Another 19 blocks were auctioned in the region in July of this year.
This Monday (20), the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) granted Petrobras a license to drill a well in block 59 (FZA-M-59), in the Foz do Amazonas basin, approximately 500 kilometres from the mouth of the Amazon river and 175 km off the coast of Amapá state.
It is the first license granted by Brazil’s environmental agency on the Amazon coast in the so-called Brazilian equatorial margin, where there are dozens of concession blocks between Amapá and Rio Grande do Norte. The area is considered the new frontier for Brazilian oil and is expected to pave the way for drilling licenses in blocks granted to foreign oil companies in July of this year.
Brazil’s equatorial margin is home to the world’s largest continuous stretch of mangroves and the Great Amazon Reef System (GARS), an ecosystem covering approximately 9,500 square kilometres, only recently described by science and located just 40 kilometres from the licensed block.
Wells already drilled and leak simulations
Petrobras and other oil companies have been trying to explore this region since the 1970s, but technical challenges and environmental risks have never allowed exploration to move forward.
An InfoAmazonia survey based on data from Brazil’s National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels (ANP) shows that one in four wells drilled on the equatorial margin was interrupted by mechanical accidents. In 1975, a Petrobras oil rig was destroyed by ocean currents nearly 300 km off the coast of Amapá. In 2011, another piece of equipment fell apart 126 km offshore, and the team had to be rescued.
“Granting the license for block 59 is a double act of sabotage. On the one hand, the Brazilian government acts against humanity by encouraging further fossil fuel expansion, against science, and betting on further global warming. On the other hand, it interferes with the very COP30, whose most important deliverable must be the implementation of the decision to phase out fossil fuels,” says Suely Araújo, Public Policy Coordinator at the Climate Observatory and former president of IBAMA.
Granting the license for block 59 is a double act of sabotage. On the one hand, the Brazilian government acts against humanity by encouraging further fossil fuel expansion, against science, and betting on further global warming. On the other hand, it interferes with the very COP30, whose most important deliverable must be the implementation of the decision to phase out fossil fuels.
Suely Araújo, Public Policy Coordinator at the Climate Observatory
Environmental threat
The license for block 59 was denied three times by IBAMA technicians during the current administration. Internal reports point to serious flaws in Petrobras’ emergency plan and significant risks of an oil spill in an area classified as “maximum compromise” by Environmental Oil Sensitivity charts (SAO) – technical documents required by international treaties signed by Brazil and prepared by government agencies, which map regions ecologically sensitive to oil.
Furthermore, at least three Indigenous territories, six Quilombola territories, and 34 conservation units are highly sensitive and would suffer irreversible damage from spills. The Uaçá Indigenous Land is one of the three territories that suffered the impacts. Indigenous Leader Luene Karipuna told InfoAmazonia that she was “very sad to receive this news today.”
“That means destruction and further accelerating the climate crisis we’re already experiencing. So we don’t need any more empty rhetoric. IBAMA should protect biodiversity and the environment, but it’s the first to abandon Indigenous peoples. Lula is the first to abandon Indigenous peoples,” he said.
Independent studies by the Amapá Institute of Scientific and Technological Research (IEPA) and Greenpeace Brazil simulated possible spills, showing that, in the event of an accident, oil slicks could reach the Amazon coast within days and put the local environment and communities at risk.
“On the eve of COP30, Brazil dresses in green on the international stage but is covered in oil at home. While the world turns to the Amazon for solutions to the climate crisis, we see IBAMA granting a license for Petrobras to drill an oil well in the heart of the planet,” says Greenpeace Brazil’s Oceans Campaign coordinator Mariana Andrade.
‘A smokescreen‘
The series of articles “To the Last Drop,” published by InfoAmazonia in April 2025, had already revealed that the licensing of block 59 served as a “smokescreen” to unlock exploration along the entire equatorial margin.
The coast between Amapá and Maranhão includes 321 oil blocks, of which 44 have already been granted for exploration.
Block 59, now licensed, is considered the first practical step in this project. Its approval could pave the way for dozens of other licenses along the Amazon coast – precisely the scenario about which environmentalists and experts have been warning since the dispute started.
IBAMA’s decision comes three months after the last ANP auction in July, when 19 exploration blocks were sold off the Amazon coast – with US companies participating in all of them and a Chinese consortium involved in half of them.
In addition to Petrobras, ExxonMobil, Chevron, CNPC, Shell, BP, Brava Energia (the result of the merger of Enauta and 3R Petroleum), and Prio also have concession blocks in the region.
IBAMA’s current president Rodrigo Agostinho also admitted in 2023 that “what is under discussion is all oil exploration in a little-known area,” emphasizing that the debate goes beyond the isolated case of block 59.
The Talanoa Institute stressed that the Brazilian government’s decision contradicts the evidence presented by the International Energy Agency (IEA), “that there is no need to open new oil or gas fields in a scenario compatible with the 1.5°C limit” and that it “compromises the global decarbonization effort.”
Opening image: Fishermen fuel their boats with petrol at a Petrobras station on the banks of the Oiapoque River in Amapá. Photo: Victor Moriyama/InfoAmazonia
