In the amazon delta, where the largest river in the world meets the Atlantic, the currents are devilish. The residents of Sucuriju, a remote postcard village, have resisted for more than a century in a landscape as gorgeous as it is opposed. Wooden houses painted in intense colors – red, green, yellow, pink… -, two schools, a Catholic church, an evangelical temple and an outpatient clinic all supported on stilts along a wooden walkway that is the main street. Embedded in the Piratuba Lake nature reserve (in the State of Amapá,Brazil),getting to Sucuriju requires stomach and patience for a long journey along the open sea along a mangrove coastline. Kilometers and kilometers of trees with their roots tangled in the air,a treasure of biodiversity on the coast of the Amazon.
Ozeas Maciel, 45 years old, president of the Sucuriju fishermen’s brotherhood. Victor Moriyama
“For us, oil means a light at the end of the tunnel,” explains Ozeas maciel, 45, president of the fishermen’s guild and the area’s most experienced boat pilot, as he swings in a hammock waiting for the scorching heat to subside.Only then does the village come back to life. “We know that with oil would come immense wealth, a possibility of advancement, because here there is no hope of having an industry or good jobs.”
In a highly controversial step, Brazil has just opened a new oil frontier. And it has done so in a sensitive place, off the Amazon coast, and at a delicate time.A few days before the UN climate summit, which for the first time will bring the international community to the largest rainforest in the world to reach a consensus on the fight against climate change-including how to abandon fossil fuels-the Government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva authorized the search for crude oil in the Amazon River delta. A permit that it refused to grant in 2023. Drilling began promptly at a point known as block 59.
Oil projects in the Amazon region (Location maps)
## Brazil’s Balancing Act: Amazon Conservation vs.Oil Production
Environmental and oil power,Brazil feels comfortable in both roles; embodies the dilemmas and contradictions of the fight against global warming. It holds 60% of the Amazon, has drastically reduced deforestation and promises to eliminate it by 2030.But by then it also wants to become the fifth largest oil producer in the world. With 3.3 million barrels per day, it is now eighth.
Petrobras, the semi-public oil company and jewel of the Brazilian economy, hopes to find in the depths of an especially rough sea the fabulous quantities of crude oil that have turned a nearby country, Guyana, into a prosperous petro-state.
In the region closest to well 59, popular support is great. Life in the Amazon rainforest,a CO sink that helps mitigate global warming,is full of difficulties and challenges. The locals, aware of the fragile balance of nature and victims of the ravages of climate change, long for prosperity, opportunities, a decent future.But many of them see oil as salvation. Lula defends that crude oil will serve to pay for the energy transition and to improve the lives of Amazonian Brazilians.
