Pro-oil Sea Minister advised all along by senior Galp employee

So, this is how it all works at the Ministry of the Sea where the blinkered, single-minded and desperately pro-oil Minister, Ana Paula Vitorino, is using taxpayers’ money to fund Galp’s appeal against the oil drilling suspension off the Aljezur coastline.

Vitorino employed Ruben Eiras as her advisor at the ministry, between January 2016 and January 2018, while his proper job was at Galp Energia.

This astonishing conflict of interests seem just fine and dandy for Vitorino whose goal is to develop Portugal’s offshore as an oil production zone, despite parlous returns at best and the cost to the Alentejo and Algarve’s tourism economy when the first oil starts to wash up on the currently pristine beaches.

Ruben Eiras now has been taken on full time by Vitorino as the Director-General of Marine Policy. Despite strict selection procedures that apply to appointments at this level, Eiras has been handed the job without it having been advertised. It has not occurred to many outside the Left Bloc and the anti-oil movement that this might be like putting the fox in charge of the chickens.

The Left Bloc politely has enquired of the Minister of the Sea about "possible incompatibilities of Ruben Eiras in the exercise of the position."

The Bloquistas have asked whether, "the said citizen between his appointment by order no. 6601/2016 until his appointment to new position by order no. 1279/2018, held the post of technician specialist in the cabinet of the Minister of the Sea simultaneously with a position at Galp Energia.”

The answer is ‘yes’ he did have both jobs at the same time, to Galp’s cheery delight no doubt as Eiras advised the Minister on what Galp wanted, not on what was best for the country.

The Bloquistas then asked Vitorino whether this "situation is in accordance with the legal precepts regarding the regime of exclusivity and, in particular, with the principle of impartiality expressed in the law." The answer is a resounding ‘no’ Vitorino can not possibly remain impartial when her chief advisor has been carefully selected from an oil company that has the most contentious concession in Portugal - Santola, off the Costa Vicentina.

João Camargo, the anti-oil and climate change environmentalist, said of the situation, "since 2016 the Ministry of the Sea has been the driving force in the Government for the oil and gas exploration and production programme in Portugal, where the Galp-Eni consortium in the Algarve and Alentejo sea area is the last one still in play."

"This ministry, which is not responsible for the oil concession areas, helped the oil companies file an injunction in 2017 and now is fronting their appeal to the ruling of the Administrative Court of Loulé that blocked the Aljezur test well."

Ruben Eiras refutes all accusations about the way he slipped into the job, from advisor to Director-General of Marine Policy, saying that an exposé in Público is "filled with falsities and inconsistencies easily dismantled by official documentation."

His appointment may be questioned on a technicality but the more important question is how a senior oil company executive was allowed to become a personal advisor to a minister and for her to think this was in any way appropriate.

Ana Paula Vitorino’s judgement first was questioned when attending the Eurasian Energy Futures Initiative in Washington.

The minister said that "the US investment in exploration and production of hydrocarbons in deep offshore in Portugal was welcome," and that, "the first test well will be drilled next year, two kilometers deep, 50km off the coast of Alentejo."

"We do not have movements in Portugal like we do in other European countries against this kind of exploitation, because we are doing things silently," boasted Vitorino, displaying the duplicitous way in which she has helped her oil company friends and her contempt for members of the public whose views clearly she abhors. 

Vitorino emphasised the relations with the United States in the exploitation of other fossil fuels and the exploration of the ocean bed which will expand significantly when Portugal’s maritime zone extension request is authorised.

Sitting next to Ana Paula Vitorino at this conference was Ruben Eiras, both an adviser to the minister, a senior manager at Galp Energia and the director of the Energy Security Programme at the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD) whose totally objective advice was: "to explore oil and gas, to transform the Port of Sines into the port of entry for shale gas produced in the United States, to explore hydrocarbons, underwater mining in the Azores, Madeira and an expanded continental shelf.

In 2015, FLAD's Energy Security Perspectives report called for "encouraging the exploration and exploitation of natural gas in national territory".

In 2012, in Expresso, referring to the extension of the continental shelf, Eiras wrote that "much of Portugal's future economic prosperity lies in exploiting the resources located on the sea floor" and in the same newspaper in 2013, "There is a sector that needs, with great urgency, the expertise of the naval industry, many of which exist in Portugal: the exploration and production of oil and gas in deep waters", and that "Portugal has a maritime border with the USA, there is a potential opportunity here to maximize the country's geostrategic position, particularly with Sines operating as a re-exporting platform for US natural gas to the European market."

And in 2016, on the Atlantic Council website: "Portugal and the United States have much to gain in building a new framework for ocean energy and mineral security cooperation in the following four strategic areas: LNG trade, oceanic renewable energies, methane hydrates and underwater mining."

Hardly independent advice, Eiras takes no account of environmental issues, and it soon became the pro-oil agenda of the Socialist government.

As the media storm raged this weekend, Eiras finally commented that he gave up his job at Galp a few months before becoming a government advisor, as if this somehow makes his activities 'cleaner.'

Galp is diversifying into renewable energy. The company has bought Goldenalco, a solar energy company, for €90 million from Miguel Barreto, the former Director-General of Energy and Geology, the same man who signed the oil concessions for the offshore Alentejo area in 2007 in favour of... Galp.

This, dear reader, is how business is done in this country.

Ruben Eiras, the one with no name tag, 'advising' the Minister for the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino

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