🛢️ Drilling rights, climate wrongs

Despite protests, Tuesday’s auction saw the area of the Amazon River Mouth basin sold to oil companies increase by 285%.

Author

Euan Marshall
June 19, 2025

OIL AND GAS

Brazil auctions off 19 new Amazonian oil drilling sites

Protesters gathered outside the Rio de Janeiro hotel where the ANP held its oil auction. “The Amazon is not up for auction,” read one of the banners. Photo: Arayara International Institute

Protesters gathered outside the Rio de Janeiro hotel where the ANP held its oil auction. “The Amazon is not up for auction,” read one of the banners. Photo: Arayara International Institute

“Scientifically unsustainable, legally indefensible and morally unjustifiable” was how federal prosecutors in Brazil’s northern state of Pará described the country’s auction of scores of land and offshore oil exploration sites on Tuesday.

Despite a series of recommendations and legal requests to suspend the National Oil Agency’s (ANP) offering of 172 blocks around the country — including in controversial and risky sites near the mouth of the Amazon River — the auction went ahead undisrupted.

  • A total of 19 blocks in the Amazon River Mouth basin were auctioned, out of a total 47 on offer.

  • 10 were snapped up by a consortium comprising ExxonMobil and Brazil’s state-controlled oil company Petrobras. 

  • The Brazilian branches of Chinese oil firm CNPC and the US’s Chevron teamed up to take the other nine.

  • The 19 Amazon River Mouth blocks generated signing bonuses of BRL 845 million (USD 154 million), 85% of the total value raised in Tuesday’s auction.

With the sale, the total area in the Amazon River Mouth basin auctioned off to oil companies rose from 5,700 square kilometers to 21,900 km2 — an area the size of Israel…

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