Oil workers criticize the sale of Equatorial Margin blocks to foreign companies.

247 - The Unified Federation of Oil Workers (FUP) strongly criticized the results of the 5th Permanent Offer Cycle of the Concession of the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), held this Monday (17), which culminated in the delivery of a significant part of the Equatorial Margin to consortia formed by foreign oil companies. The complaint was released through an official note from the union entity.

According to FUP (the Unified Federation of Oil Workers), Chevron, in consortium with the Chinese state-owned company CNPC, won 53,1% of the blocks offered in the Amazon River mouth region. Petrobras, despite leading efforts to meet environmental licensing requirements, secured 46,9% of the auctioned areas, but will operate only 18,8%. The federation warns that this reduction in the Brazilian state-owned company's leading role compromises national control over an area considered strategic for the future of the country's energy matrix.

"Sovereignty is being auctioned off."

“The loss of Petrobras' leading role weakens national control over sensitive areas of high strategic value,” the statement says. According to FUP, conducting the auction under a concession regime favors international private interests and represents a setback in the State's ability to plan and distribute the benefits generated by oil exploration.

The federation also criticizes the lack of clear guidelines regarding the allocation of resources from these activities. "The government is abandoning fundamental instruments for planning and distributing oil wealth, in addition to failing to define that these resources should be used for the economic, social, and sustainable development of the regions with the worst Human Development Indexes in Brazil," the organization warns.

Defending Petrobras and the national interest.

FUP reaffirmed its commitment to defending Petrobras as a strategic public company and to preserving the country's energy sovereignty. "We will remain steadfast in the fight for the interests of the Brazilian people," the statement concludes.

The Equatorial Margin, which includes the Amazon River mouth basin, is considered one of the most promising new exploratory frontiers in the world, with the potential to transform the geopolitics of energy in Brazil. Given this, FUP's criticism points to the contradiction between the discourse of sovereignty and the practices of alienating sensitive areas to foreign companies.

The sale of oil blocks under a model that reduces Petrobras' direct influence and prioritizes foreign multinationals reopens the debate about which energy project Brazil wants to adopt — one guided by national sovereignty or by the logic of financializing natural resources.

Earlier, the ANP auction concluded with 34 oil exploration blocks awarded in the Parecis, Equatorial Margin, Santos, and Pelotas basins: an area of ​​28.359,55 square kilometers. In total, 172 exploration areas were put up for auction.

Nine winning companies — two Brazilian and seven foreign — spent over R$ 989 million on acquiring the blocks. The minimum projected investment in the exploration phase is R$ 1,45 billion. Petrobras was one of the standouts, acquiring ten blocks in the Equatorial Margin and three blocks in the Pelotas Basin, with an investment of R$ 139 million.