Pressure from the Algarve’s mayors and anti-oil and gas action groups seem to be having the desired effect as rumours echo through the corridors of power in Lisbon that the Portfuel concessions to explore across much of the region’s territory may be withdrawn.
The government may have found the excuse needed to halt onshore drilling as Portufuel may not have the necessary insurance covers as required under its contract, nor does it have a clean three year technical and financial record as required in order to fulfil the contractual terms.
According to a report in Correio da Manhã, ‘Portfuel was set up in March 2013 and applied for the Aljezur and Tavira concessions in November, 2014.’
Portfuel, owned by brewer and former football club owner Sousa Cintra, already has been issued with environmental non-compliance fines by the GNR’s environmental arm SEPNA and may have been fined up to 4 times since December over drilling activity at Rogil, a well that environmentalists claim is suspicious as the licence is for a maximum of 500 metres depth (water in the area is at 120 metres) and there have been powerful chemical smells and strange effluents at the site.(see picture below)
Sousa Cintra guarantees that Portufuel “is within the law and legal parameters” yet has no track record at all in oil and agas exploration, indeed it was removed from the bidding process by the Minister Jorge Moreira da Silva who rather suspiciously, three months later, approved Portfuel as sole concession holder for the Algarve. It is not clear what changes were made in these months, if any.
The Prime Minister, António Costa, said that the onshore and offshore licensees must press ahead as they had valid contracts and that the government only wanted to know if oil or gas deposits existed.
The government’s fuel authority’s chairman Paulo Carmona took a battering at a public consultation in Faro in January this year and proved unable to answer many of the questions put to him at the meeting or in subsequent written answers.
Backing the mayors at the January 12th meeting were Vitor Neto (NERA), Daniel do Adro (AIHSA), Elidérico Viegas (AHETA), Carlos Luís (CEAL), Victor Guerreiro (ACRAL) and Steven Piedade (ANJE) all of whom demanded the immediate halt of the of oil and gas exploration programme for the Algarve.
Then the mayors, in the form of the mayors group AMAL, met the Secretary of State for Energy, Jorge Seguro Sanches at the end of January and demanded answers to concerns over onshore drilling and the possible impact on tourism and agriculture in the region.
Confirmation is awaited from Lisbon as to the government’s next move but a protracted court case that pitches the government against the region’s mayors would involve disclosure of possibly sensitive data and certainly would trigger reams of adverse publicity that might serve also to damage the government’s offshore oil and gas ambitions.
Sousa Cintra this week sent a letter of complaint from Portfuel to the Vila do Bispo mayor irritated about local pressure groups and their use of selective information, especially over fracking.
The Portufuel letter also used selective information and has widely been seen as a last ditch attempt to curry favour and create dissent within AMAL as the Vila do Bispo mayor is a long-term friend of Portfuel’s owner.
If Portufuel loses the Algarve blocs this will represent a major victory for the pressure groups established to fight off the perceived threats to the environment and tourism, the Algarve's major employer, but leaves the question of the offshore licenses which will be harder nut to crack despite Portugal's agreement to the Paris 2016 agreement on CO2 emissions and its agreement to develop renewable energy sources rather than oil and gas.
In a Portuguese TV report on Friday evening, the whole affair was aired and Portufuel shown to be a recently established company without the conditions needed to be granted an exploration license.
The reasons behind granting the license, just days before the Passos Coelho government was replaced by the Sociaists, need to be discussed in parliament as former Ministers and Secretaries of State seem to have ignored the rules to accommodate Portufuel and Sousa Cintra.
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The TV report about Sousa Cintra and Portfuel starts at minute 23, after the short ad, and is in Portuguese on this link:
http://www.rtp.pt/play/p2283/sexta-as-9
