The environmental agency of a country with a cultivated green image is warning about the risks of encouraging the exploitation of seabed resources. Its experts claim that there is not enough data to ensure the safety of the operation.
Despite conflicting technical opinions, the government is continuing the project to explore a seabed area larger than the state of São Paulo. Unaware of water pollution and damage to wildlife and fisheries, Parliament approves a reckless plan.
It looks like Brazil, but it's not. It could be the Lula government's crazy proposal to extract oil from the equatorial edge of the Amazon. But this is Norway, champions of environmental friendliness.
On Tuesday (9) its parliamentarians approved the removal of the continental shelf by a vote of 80 to 20, reports the Nature Briefing newsletter. The Stortinget approved feasibility studies to explore manganese and sulfides on the seabed.
Extraction would require new votes in Parliament, if possible, the bulletin said. But the study permit granted is seen as the proverbial opening of the gate to the herd.
Extracting minerals from the seabed is controversial because it would disrupt ecosystems hundreds or thousands of meters below the surface and are currently poorly understood. An upheaval of the Earth's crust could almost destroy the communities of organisms at the base of the marine food chain.
The area in question covers 281,000 km2 around Svalbard, an archipelago within the Arctic Circle that was placed under Norwegian administration by a 1920 treaty. However, the agreement guarantees other countries access to natural resources in the region.
In addition to sulfides and manganese, everyone also has an eye on lithium and metals such as cobalt, nickel, lithium and niobium as well as rare earths. These are essential raw materials for the energy transition: from batteries for electric cars and cell phones to stateoftheart wind turbines.
It bothers the USA and Europe that a large part of the terrestrial deposits of these ores are not only finite, but also found in China and in African or South American countries. Hence the idea of looking for them on the bottom of the ocean or, in Elon Musk's delusions, on the moon and other planets or asteroids.
Arctic countries around Svalbard with a mining tradition such as Russia, the USA (Alaska) and Canada could dispute Norway's sovereignty over possible deposits. But the immediate concern is the environmental impact on a part of the ocean that already suffers from unsustainable fishing, such as cod.
It's not just the decline of the delicious Gadus morhua and whaling that are damaging Norway's environmental reputation. The Nordic country of just 5.5 million people is the fourthlargest exporter of natural gas and an eighth of oil, both fossil fuels the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
As Rodrigo Tavares pointed out in his column on Wednesday (10), Norway “Europe's preppy”, as he says increased gas and oil production by 1.5% in 2023, the hottest year on record. In March, another 84 million barrels were discovered near the Troll field (the name is not entirely lost).
Despite everything, Preppys manages to maintain a good environmental reputation. It has a lot to do with the fossilfueled sovereign wealth fund, which provides funds for the Amazon fund or for the decarbonization of the Norwegian economy and the electrification of its car fleet (80% of new cars).
Here in Brazil, the equatorial edge of the Amazon, after presalting, is being sold as Petrobras' new golden goose. Gold, which, as we know, only fueled one of the country's biggest corruption schemes, not the bright future promised by Lula and Dilma.