Petrobras Sued for Illegally Depositing Tons of Equipment and Oil Platform Pipes in Campos Basin, Rio de Janeiro

Referred to as “Submarine Warehouse,” Petrobras Accumulates Tons of Materials from Its Oil Platforms in the Campos Basin without Any Environmental Licensing

Petrobras and the Ministry of Energy received a letter from the president of the Senate Environment Commission, Senator Fabiano Contarato, demanding explanations about the irregular deposits that the state-owned company has been “feeding” for over twenty years in the Campos Basin, Rio de Janeiro. The Guanabara Bay in RJ is also facing a similar problem and is becoming a “graveyard” for ships.

The request is based on the report made earlier this month by Estadão, which revealed details of six areas that Petrobras itself called a “submarine warehouse,” where it accumulates thousands of tons of equipment and pipelines from its oil platforms without any environmental licensing.

Currently, Petrobras has over 1,400 kilometers of flexible pipes used in oil extraction on the 460 square kilometers of the seabed. To give an idea of the scale, it’s as if the city of Florianópolis (SC) or Porto Alegre (RS) were transformed into a marine deposit.

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The areas that Petrobras named “submarine warehouse” began to be used in 1991 (Corvina). Subsequently, Pargo A and Pargo B came in 1992, Garoupinha in 1998, Alsub in 1999, and Altemp in 2003.

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According to Petrobras, “the legislation created at the time depended on a series of regulations for the requirement of such procedure,” and the company adds that, in December 2002, there was an agreement (TAC of the Campos Basin) for the “definitive regularization of the environmental licensing of maritime production activities and respective support units in the Campos Basin,” and that the operation of submarine materials “started to be protected by the TAC of the Campos Basin, according to Petrobras’s understanding.”

However, Ibama states, “It is noted that the beginning of the use of the Altemp area occurred after the signing of the TAC of the Campos Basin without any communication from Petrobras regarding it at that time.”

Petrobras told Estadão that “there was no omission” on the part of the company. “In the company’s understanding, the operation in these areas began to be protected by the TAC of the Campos Basin from 2002.”