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Na Mídia - 15/08/18

Decommissioning in Brazil: environmental issues and regulatory gaps By Fernanda Martinez Campos Cotecchia and Patricia de Albuquerque de Azevedo*

 

Despite its political crisis and social inequality, Brazil is one of the world’s economic powers. Having risen from ninth to eighth place in 2018’s nominal GDP rank, the country’s success is largely due to its oil and gas industry. Nonetheless, the economical mess has taken its tow on Brazil’s natural beauties.

As ships, platforms and other sorts of equipment come to Brazilian waters, they bring along uninvited guests: Tubastraea coccinea and Tubastraea  tagusensis, respectively originated from the Indo-Pacific and Galapagos Islands, commonly known as Sun Coral.

The oldest records of Tubastraea spp. in Brazil date back to 1980. They first appeared at the Campos Basin, a petroleum drilling site in Rio de Janeiro, and later spread to Ilha Grande, west of Rio, before finally reaching other states on the Brazilian southern coast. There is evidence that the embedding of specimens on the hull of ships and platforms was the cause of the Sun Coral’s arrival: for instance, researchers have established a connection between ship routes and ports used by the oil and gas industry and the main infestation spots.

Since the 2000s, researchers have been struggling  to combat the Sun Coral’s expansion in Brazilian waters. One of the most relevant initiatives dedicated to this goal is Projeto Coral-Sol (PCS), developed by the Brazilian Institute of Biodiversity, which currently monitors an area of more than 310 miles.

One of the project’s studies from 2011 reveals that 1/3 of the 326 monitored spots were infested.

As a result of its hasty proliferation ratio, the Sun Coral tends to supplant the native corals, thus eliminating the food supply for a variety of animals and disturbing the marine food chain as a whole.

Recent studies have concluded that infestations may be triggered or aggravated by the deactivation procedures of maritime equipment used in the oil and gas industry, known as decommissioning. As petroleum wells are dried out, a myriad of structures left on site must be replaced or discarded.

Problem is, when these structures are taken from sea bottom to surface, they carry along the Tubastraea spp. attached to them, making it easier for the invaders to reach the coast.

This causality between decommissioning and Sun Coral generates the need for regulation, mainly considering the complex arrangement of the Brazilian Public Administration, composed by a variety of Federal and State environmental agencies, each of them competent to issue regulations and to exert policies on their jurisdictions.

Although, almost forty years after the start of the Sun Coral invasion, the country still lacks rules that connect both matters. Most of Brazilian environmental laws focus on the licensing stages, often ignoring the decommission process. Some of the exceptions are Resolutions 25/2002, 27/2006 and 25/2014, issued by the National Petroleum Agency – ANP.

Despite the existence of those rulings, the danger of the Sun Coral proliferation during decommissioning
procedures is still absent from Brazilian legislation.

Fortunately, public bodies and civil society are already aware of the problem, and have been developing measures to address it, especially the creation of a study group with members of ANP, IBAMA and the Navy Authority, aiming to have a unique legislation covering such three authorities.

The goal is to present a draft of such for public audience, and consequently get also the comments of all
the interested parties on this subject.

Notwithstanding the above, it is also important to highlight the tax issue that will come with decommissioning, as the actual exportation of the rigs and relevant equipment is required for termination of the Repetro special custom regime. This is also an important issue to be addressed, as in the near future many rigs should be decommissioned and the parties involved in the operation should start to prepare this complex procedure.

* Fernanda Martinez Campos Cotecchia, a lawyer at Kincaid | Mendes Vianna Advogados, is the Coordinator of NBCC’s regulatory committee. Her colleague Patricia de Albuquerque de Azevedo has also contributed to the article.