As the Minister of the Sea visited the Algarve last week, offering funding for projects related to the Algarve's new 'Blue Economy,' she failed to mention full details of where the new money would be coming from.
It turns out that the Blue Economy fund, about which she spoke so compellingly as the answer to many of the Algarve’s problems of low investment levels, will be supported by the very oil and gas industry which threatens the Algarve's onshore and offshore environments.
The oil sector will be part-financing the new 'Blue Fund.' This news was quietly released last week by the Council of Ministers by way of an entry in the Official Gazette, signed off by the outgoing President of the Republic, Aníbal Cavaco Silva in one of his last administrative acts.
The new law states that the oil sector will be one of the main contributors to the Blue Fund which will be controlled by the Minister for the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino. A percentage of revenues and tax from oil products will go to the fund and the level will be set annually in the State Budget.
It is “foreseen that financial contributions from the oil and gas companies will go the Blue Fund which will start promoting activities related to the sea from 1 January 2017.”
In this early stage there will be no transfers from the 2016 State Budget, but there will be a contribution to the Blue Fund from next year from oil companies and port authorities, "including the allocation of part of the proceeds of their fees."
Ana Paula Vitorino said last week that this year the Blue Fund should raise about €10 million of funding for its activities.
There also will be contributions from the European Union but the funding sources from Portugal will come from the oil companies, dividends from the port authorities; the government and money from the Directorate-General for Natural Resources, Security and Maritime Services.
The Blue Fund proudly aims to develop the maritime economy, scientific and technological research and the protection and monitoring of the marine environment and maritime safety yet its funding is partly, maybe largely, dependent on oil and gas companies, some of which currently are involved in exploring for oil and gas in the Algarve intending to turn the region's offshore and onshore areas into hydrocarbon production zones.
This is the same conflict of interests famously ignored by the Gulbenkian Foundation which is funding its Oceans Initiative while remaining the 100% owner of Algarve exploration concession holder Partex.
The details of the Blue Fund's sources of funding will become clearer over time but using oil revenues to fund sunrise ecological and environmentally friendly businesses will not appeal to those of the region's ecological and environmental organisations already engaged in a struggle to ban exploration and extraction of oil or gas from the Algarve's land and its immediate seas.