The National Entity for the Fuel Market (ENMC) is coming back to the Algarve to again try and explain why oil and gas exploration is such a good idea for the region.
The public hearing aims to clarify the issues surrounding oil exploration in the Algarve, on January 12, at the University of the Algarve's Escola Superior de Saúde.
The government body intends to help clarify its position and to demystify some incorrect ideas that have gone public on the subject of prospecting for oil in the Algarve.
The blurb says that the government wants all opinion leaders to come along to the debriefing session so that the information can be transmitted to the public.
The public can come along, but everyone must pre-register before January 8th by emailing:
inscricoes.conferencias@enmc.pt
The last time the ENMC postition was discussed,the mayor of Vila do Bispo, Adelino Soares, it was “shameful” that areas of outstanding natural beauty could be threatened without anyone having been previously informed."
An oil expert, wheeled in by concession owner Portfuel, tried to persuade locals that an oil business in the Algarve would be “unoffensive”, “non-destructive”, “uninvasive”, “unperturbing for landscape, subsoil or animals.”
When it came to the section on 'risks' in the presentation by Dr Rui Penedo dos Reis, he announced that time was too short.
Since which, the Algarve mayors gropup AMAL decided that the Algarve is not the place for an ill-thought-out, invasive and potentially polluting oil or gas extraction industry.
Pressure groups ASMAA and PALP have organised petitions and the subject again will be debated in parliament while the suspiciously generous contracts are being reviewed in Brussels - one of which gives the State a royalty of just 10 cents a barrel, or gas equivalent, only 'after all costs have been recouped'.
AMAL has issued a position statement saying it would use ‘all legal methods’ to halt the exploration for oil and gas in the Algarve and that the process had been notable for the lack of consultation involved.
The ENMC says it received the mayors’ statement "with surprise" and that it had put all the contracts and associated information on its website the day after the signing of these contracts," and that in its role as supervisor, “it was primarily responsible for defending the national and public interest, and had sought from the outset to ensure all conditions of transparency and corporate information were met."
In respect of transparency, the ENMC failed as informing people after the event is hardly the hallmark of open government.
How the ENMC representatives will be received in Faro on January 12th can confidently be predicted. The big mistake made by ENMC was to issue onshore licences.
Had it stuck to offshore, the Algarve's population would have drifted along as it usually does with a shrug and a smile but now that the Algarve’s land, property, water resources and aquifers are threatened by the prospect of fracking, widely understood to be devastating to the land around the drill sites and water resources below, the game is up and the men in suits from Lisbon can expect to have to answer some tough questions, not continue to lie and get away with offering assurances that everything will be all right.
