ENERGY-BRAZIL: The Adventure of Amazon Oil

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

URUCU, Jun 3 2005 (IPS) - The jaguar walked into the tent, scratched the cook’s face and carried away his backpack. Why was the cook singled out from among 40 workers? Because he hadn’t taken a bath after work, and still smelled like food.

According to topographer Leonardo Ramos, this occurred nearly 20 years ago, when teams from Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, started prospecting and building installations for pumping oil and natural gas in the jungle around the Urucú River, in the heart of the Amazon jungle.

Boats and helicopters were the only means of transport in the region, where Brazil’s lightest crude oil is found.

Since there was no heliport, the only way to disembark from the helicopters was by ropes, "and sometimes your boots would fall into the mud below," said Cesar Tavares Pereira, who works in Rio de Janeiro but has visited Urucú 112 times.

Ramos and Pereira are two of the Petrobras employees who were already familiar with the adventures and risks of the Amazon jungle when the discovery of commercially viable oil fields was still just a dream, one that had been pursued since the early 20th century.

Success came in 1986. Two years later, Urucú province was producing 3,500 barrels a day of petroleum, which is shipped out on barges to be refined in Manaus, the capital of the northwestern state of Amazonas, 650 km away.

Output grew as new wells were discovered. The area currently produces 60,000 barrels a day of oil and 10,000 cubic metres of natural gas which, after processing, generate 1,500 tons a day of cooking gas, to supply nearly the whole Amazon jungle region in Brazil, as well as parts of Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.

Since 1998, a 285-km pipeline has carried oil as well as cooking gas from Urucú to the port of Coari on the Solimoes River (the Solimoes and Negro rivers converge to form the main branch of the Amazon River at Manaus).

From Coari, the oil and gas are transported by ship, but a pipeline is to be built next year to carry the natural gas extracted in Urucú to Manaus, to mainly supply thermoelectric plants.

For now, most of the natural gas is reinjected into the oil fields, because of the lack of purchase contracts.

Using the gas will bring down the costs of electricity in Manaus, a city of 1.7 million, besides reducing pollution and the risk of blackouts, a serious problem in 1998.

It is estimated that within 10 years, the public sector will save around three billion dollars and that new companies will begin to set up shop in the Manaus industrial district.

After Petrobras suffered serious accidents in 2000, including oil spills in Guanabara bay, which bathes the shores of Rio de Janeiro, and in the southern state of Paraná, greater care has been taken in producing and transporting oil and natural gas in an environmentally sensitive area like the Amazon.

The oil giant has created more than 900 "environmental defence centres" whose teams not only deal with accidents for which the company is directly responsible, but also provide services, like fire-fighting, to society as a whole, said Sven Wolff, general manager of Petrobras’ Solimoes Basin Unit.

In Urucú, all of the garbage is packed up for recycling or is burnt, the sewage is treated, and the areas that have been deforested by Petrobras are replanted with the same species of trees that were cut down, said Ken Wheeler Araujo, manager of marketing and production coordination and control.

"Progress in harmony with nature" is the local slogan. Ruy Menezes, an agroforestry expert, oversees a project that has more than 1,000 plants from 77 species of orchids that will be replanted in the forests. In addition, the project has 215,000 seedlings of 200 different species of trees.

Constant efforts at fighting mosquitoes have reduced the incidence of malaria to almost zero, and the Esperança School teaches the employees of subcontractors – who make up the majority of the 1,170 workers in Urucú – to read and write, and provides instruction in different areas.

An airport has also been built for flying employees to Manaus and smaller cities and towns nearby.

The employees of Petrobras work 14-day shifts in Urucú followed by 21 days off, the same work schedule followed by offshore platform workers. Employees of subcontractors also work 14-day shifts, with 14 days off.

Chemist Iray James, for example, is in charge of quality control and spends his days off with his family in Natal, the capital of the northeastern state of Río Grande do Norte, which is a five-hour flight from Urucú.

"I love Urucú," he told IPS, adding that he was offered a job in a laboratory in Natal that was attractive from a technological point of view. But he said he would try to return to the heart of the Amazon jungle, where he has worked for nine years.

James is not an exception: most of the Petrobras workers in Urucú live outside of Amazonas, and one even lives in the U.S. state of Florida.

Rossineide Gomes Brito, a nutritionist with a services company that is one of Petrobras’ subcontractors, has been working in Urucú for five years and comes from Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and its main industrial centre.

Cesar Pereira, Petrobras manager of customer relations in Rio de Janeiro, told IPS that he feels proud to be taking part in this undertaking, and that he is "proud to be a Brazilian and an oil industry worker."

Pereira recently made his 112th trip to Urucú, accompanied by a group of 10 foreign journalists. His nationalism is a widespread sentiment among Petrobras workers.