The government is said to be re-assessing its pro-oil commitment and is due to make an announcement later this year.
The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, spoke to reporters after a speech at the Gulbenkian Foundation which criticised the government for allowing oil and gas exploration to go ahead, against a structural shift in the energy market to renewables, and the nation’s CO2 reduction agreements.
The acceptance speech by choreographer, Rui Horta, who had been awarded the Gulbenkian Knowledge Prize, (Prémio Gulbenkian Conhecimento), served to highlight the population’s view on oil exploration in front of the ‘great and the good,’ including the President of the Republic.
Horta today took full advantage of his allotted time to accept his prize by calling for a national debate to reflect people’s views to ban the exploration of hydrocarbons in the Algarve.
"I hope that there will be an institutional reflection in our Government and, Mr President, in the Nation. What inspires the Gulbenkian Foundation, inspired by the Spaniards, who last week decided to close all oil explorations, inspire us," said Rui Horta, the director of the Montemo-o-Novo Cultural Association, ‘O Espaço do Tempo.’
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, applauded Rui Horta's acceptance speech but would not comment on oil exploration in the Algarve, but later announced to reporters that the Government, "is re-thinking this matter."
"As the Government re-weighing the matter and is going to make a decision later this year, I did not want to anticipate the executive. I did not want to be accused of placing the government under pressure on a matter where it is quite advanced in its thinking," the President told reporters after the ceremony.
In a hugely applauded speech at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Rui Horta said that "in September everything indicates that there will be oil exploration, the first drilling in the ocean floor, in front of the extraordinary site that is Aljezur."
"We can not be satisfied," said the director of ‘O Espaço do Tempo.’
Rui Horta introduced the theme and referred directly to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, "Our President, a person of whom I am very proud, who has been an excellent President, who is rarely mistaken, is about to deceive himself as two years ago he told us that it would be easier to go to the moon than find oil in the Algarve."
The Gulbenkian Knowledge Prize was awarded to Rui Horta for his work in the multidisciplinary residence and artistic experimentation centre of Montemor-o-Novo but he now will be remembered as being the man who nudged the President into divulging the government’s possible election-winning strategy, one where all oil and gas exploration and drilling in Portugal will be scrapped and where Portugal will become a renewable energy centre of research and production.
The first drilling is due to start in September with Galp-ENI sinking a test well off Aljezur, assuming Loulé court allows this to go ahead.
This is a tense period in the oil exploration programme, one in which the government variously has used lies, delays, the court system, its tame media partners and corporate PR departments to push a pro-oil agenda that, the antis claim amid much public support, is against the public interest.
Without active anti-oil and media sectors laying bare the government’s machinations and deceptions, the public would have been blissfully unaware of what is going on its name, until the first oil leak hits the tourist beaches and hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers opt for cheaper options of Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt, now back on the tourism radar. A simple cost:benefit analysis would suffice to stop all drilling activity, say the anti-oil associations.
The government claims to be ‘upholding contracts legally entered in to by the State and the energy sector’ while the anti-oil associations and many MPs claim these original concession contracts were signed under highly suspicious circumstances, were never in the national interest and should be torn up, especially as Portugal has the best conditions in Europe for wind, solar and water energy and does not need any more imported oil than is imported anyway, in declining volume as renewables take over.
