By IANS
Sao Paulo : Brazil plans to spend some $35.5 million on oil and gas exploration in the northern Amazonian state of Acre, on the border with Bolivia, the official Agencia Brasil news agency reported.
The goal of the project, undertaken by the National Petroleum Agency (ANP), is to determine the region’s potential for oil and gas production, according to the Spanish News agency EFE.
Environmentalists oppose the project, claiming it will destroy the ecosystem of the area, while supporters of oil exploration in the Amazon claim energy development will create jobs and benefit a forgotten region of Brazil.
The oil exploration initiative, which must still be approved by environmental regulators, will focus on an area near the Jurua River, which empties into the Solimoes River, where another energy project has generated some $23.8 million in income for the city of Coari from gas production.
The Acre State Industrial Federation said it backed the project and planned to raise some $15 million in funding for it.
“We should expand exploration in that region to find out what the potential is for crude in nine Amazonian states,” ANP chief Getulio Silveira Leite told a congressional committee last week.