The parliamentary leader of the Left Bloc, Pedro Filipe Soares, today challenged the government to scrap all oil and gas exploration contracts in Portugal."The idea that oil is the future of energy is clearly an idea of the past," said the bloquista, adding that no new exploration contracts should be signed.
The Left Bloc is presenting a draft resolution to parliament, recommending that the Government does not grant petroleum prospecting licenses in the Peniche Basin, or anywhere else. For the party, this is only the first step of a new paradigm: the objective is to ensure that there are no such oil and gas projects anywhere along the Portuguese coast.
Pedro Filipe Soares was part of a delegation visiting the Fortress of Peniche and explained that on May 18, 2007, the government negotiated a concession agreement for oil research in the Peniche Basin with a consortium of four companies - Galp (30%), Repsol (34%), Kosmos 31%) and Partex (5%).
This contract covered four blocks, Camarão, Ameijoa, Mexilhão and Ostra.
Ten years later, the consortium gave up on three of these concession areas based on the analysis of the geological data it has collected which showed a poor chance of success. Galp recorded a loss of €22 million on the exercise.
In May 2017, Galp, led by Carlos Gomes da Silva, requested the end of its partners' involvement in the Camarão concession area and requesting that Galp alone would press ahead as the operator of the consortium under the original 2007 contract, as the original partners had dropped out.
Galp's now wants a green light for exploration in the Camarão concession area by using the original 2007 contract. This contract predates law changes that require consultation with those local council areas that may be affected by an oil spill, also the energy company will have to reapply to government to have a new license issued in Galp's name alone.
"In this way, the transfer of a contract between private parties will be detrimental to the State and its objectives in combating climate change," argues the Left Bloc.
"The country must have effective policies to combat climate change. In this context, it is essential to reduce CO2 emissions and, at the same time, to help prevent global emissions from increasing. This objective will only be possible through the cancellation of the remaining hydrocarbon concessions on land and at sea," reads the draft resolution from the Left Bloc.