By Vijay Prashad and Miguel Stedile – Sep 10, 2026On August 14, 2026, Petrobras announced the identification of hydrocarbons in the Morpho exploratory well, located in block FZA-M-59 in the Foz do Amazonas basin, off the coast of Amapá, Brazil. The well sits about 175 kilometers from the coast, in a water column 2,886 meters deep and nearly 500 kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River. Electric logs and rock samples indicated the presence of a location with petroleum potential. Petrobras, the owner and sole operator of the territory, continued drilling to assess what lies below and the extent of the occurrence.Although this is an important discovery, it is crucial to be precise about what Petrobras found. Magda Chambriard, president of Petrobras, was clear: there is oil, but the company does not yet know in what quantity. Petrobras plans to drill additional wells to determine the true potential of the area. Production can begin only after reserves are delineated and a development project is prepared—stages that, according to Chambriard’s estimates, will take six to seven years.The large figures circulating in the press, in turn, refer to geological estimates for the basin as a whole or for the entire Equatorial Margin. Earlier reports relied on estimates from the Energy Research Company (Empresa de Pesquisa Energética, EPE), which placed recoverable resources in the Foz do Amazonas basin at approximately 5.7 billion barrels. A later EPE study estimated 6.2 billion barrels of oil in the northwest portion of the basin, with total recoverable resources potentially reaching 10 billion barrels of oil.Those estimates relate to the basin, not to the Morpho discovery itself. For the entire Equatorial Margin, estimates cited in Brazilian reports range from 30 billion barrels (National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels — ANP) to 41 billion barrels, according to EPE’s PDE 2035. These are impressive numbers, but they naturally represent expectations, not oil actually produced.A single geological system, several political bordersThe Brazilian Equatorial Margin stretches for more than 2,200 kilometers, from Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte and includes five sedimentary basins. Its northern areas are part of the same vast Cretaceous petroleum province that yielded spectacular discoveries off the coasts of Guyana and Suriname.When South America and Africa separated, deep-water basins, marine source rocks, channels, submarine fans, and reservoirs formed on both sides of the Equatorial Atlantic. Oil does not respect borders later drawn by empires and states, although the right to extract it certainly does.That is why the discovery of the Morpho exploratory well must be understood as part of an oil arc, not as an isolated reservoir. Northwest of Brazil are the Suriname discoveries and the Stabroek block in Guyana, where ExxonMobil and its partners have found more than 11 billion barrels of recoverable resources. Further west lies the maritime zone affected by Venezuela’s historic claim over Essequibo, a dispute currently before the International Court of Justice.Although the petroleum systems may be connected along that continental margin, the respective legal regimes are not. Morpho lies in Brazilian maritime jurisdiction, in a block awarded by the ANP in 2013. The area is not located in the disputed zone between Guyana and Venezuela, nor does its exploitation depend on the resolution of that conflict, and there should be no friction with neighboring French Guiana.The oil-bearing belt certainly crosses political borders, extending from Brazilian waters to Venezuelan waters. However, there is no doubt that the discovery by Petrobras is entirely in Brazilian waters, and Brazil has sovereignty over the destiny of that discovery. Neither Washington nor any oil company (such as ExxonMobil, which leads operations in the region) has any supervisory right over the Brazilian segment of this oil belt.The environmental argumentThe public debate is often presented as a simple clash between development and nature. That is too simplistic. The Foz do Amazonas basin lies near one of the planet’s most ecologically sensitive regions. Amapá contains vast protected areas, immense mangroves, fishing zones on which coastal populations depend, and indigenous communities whose rights cannot be treated as secondary.Ultradeepwater operations carry real risks. In January 2026, a drilling fluid leak halted activities in the Morpho project; as a result, IBAMA—the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, linked to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change—fined Petrobras R$2.5 million. The environmental regulator classified the project’s impact at the highest level used to calculate compensations and demanded additional information before granting licenses for new wells.These facts demand rigorous regulation, transparent scientific studies, effective consultations, the greatest available capacity to respond to spills, and effective accountability for any damage. Sovereignty is not a license for negligence; it means that Brazil’s various institutions (from IBAMA to unions and affected communities) must define the conditions under which the country will use—or decide not to use—the oil discovery.An Associated Press report by Gabriela Sá Pessoa highlights the risks in the Oiapoque region, including pressure on housing and public services, as well as fears among indigenous residents (such as members of the Galibi Kali’na community). These are serious issues, and Pessoa did excellent journalism on the subject (she joins a notable group of Brazilian journalists, such as Elaíze Farias and Kátia Brasil of Amazônia Real, Lúcio Flávio Pinto of Jornal Pessoal, and Eliane Brum of Sumaúma, who have exposed the unjust treatment of nature and humanity by the megacorporations operating in the Amazon region).There is no reason to doubt the anxiety concerning the future of this enormous undertaking. Will the benefits reach the population? Will nature be protected to the greatest possible extent? Or will this be another gift to big corporations and, in particular, to US oil companies?There is undeniable international pressure against Petrobras opening the Foz do Amazonas frontier, although it does not appear as a documented order from the US government. French President Emmanuel Macron promised to try to convince Lula to abandon the project, Greenpeace and allied organizations sought to cancel the operating license in court, Avaaz organized a global petition directed at the Brazilian president, and WWF, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and the World Benchmarking Alliance have called for an end to new exploration licenses and a redefinition of Petrobras’s mandate.The international media and climate performance networks have amplified that pressure by presenting the project as a test of Brazil’s climate credibility. The president of the Brazilian Congress, Davi Alcolumbre, described such interventions as attempts by other countries to control Brazil’s future. What public records do not yet show is the existence of a direct campaign by the government of the United States, the US Congress, or Petrobras’s major shareholders to cancel the Morpho project.The pressure is real, but it should not be exaggerated without official record. It operates through the construction of legitimacy: ExxonMobil’s oil in Essequibo is portrayed as investment and energy security, while Petrobras’s oil is treated as an aggression against the Amazon, even when the Brazilian well lies hundreds of kilometers from the river mouth.Petrobras and the memory of the pre-salt oil reservesBrazil has reasons to recognize this pattern. The discovery of massive pre-salt oil reserves in 2006 and 2007 altered the country’s potential. Under former Lula governments, Brazil created rules that gave Petrobras a central operational role and directed part of oil revenues to health and education. The resource was seen not only as a commodity but as a public lever: a way to finance social rights, strengthen national engineering, build industrial capacity, and reduce subordination to foreign capital.The dismantling of the pre-salt oil model began with Operation Lava Jato (initiated in 2014), which presented itself as an anti-corruption crusade but devastated Brazilian construction and engineering firms, destroyed jobs, and undermined Petrobras’s capacity to coordinate national development. The removal of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 was followed—during the administrations of Michel Temer (2016–2018) and Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2023)—by changes to the pre-salt regime.The Temer and Bolsonaro governments opened strategic assets to foreign companies and sold or hollowed out parts of Petrobras’s integrated system. Brazil remained a large crude oil producer but continued the absurd colonial practice of exporting crude while importing higher-value refined products.Given Petrobras’s restricted horizon, Morpho raises a broader question than the mere profitability of an offshore field: will a new petroleum province reinforce Petrobras as a vertically integrated public company, as well as the shipbuilding industry, engineering, refining, petrochemicals, and public investment in Brazil? Or will Brazil simply inject another flow of crude into the world market, leaving technology, finance, shippingm and most of the added value in foreign hands? National ownership of the license is essential, but it is only the beginning of sovereignty.The strategic moment is also important. About four-fifths of current Brazilian production comes from the pre-salt oil, whose output is expected to peak and then decline in the 2030s. Petrobras argues that it needs to replace reserves to prevent Brazil from again depending on imported oil. A country of more than 200 million people cannot plan its energy future assuming constant supply from a peaceful world market. Wars, sanctions, confiscations, and blockades in recent years have destroyed that illusion.Oil: risks, opportunities, and dilemmasWashington’s conduct in the Caribbean and northern South America reveals two doctrines. Where a US corporation controls production, oil development is defended using arguments about contracts, stability, and territorial integrity. ExxonMobil has declared it will remain in Guyana despite Venezuela’s contestation, and the United States has warned Caracas against interference.Where a company operated by a sovereign state could control a new and vast petroleum province, environmental and financial pressures are mobilized to restrict its room to maneuver. The international balance of power determines which ecological concerns gain prominence and which disappear. The United States, still the world’s largest oil producer, has no moral authority to demand that Brazil keep its resources untouched while US companies expand production in other areas of the same geological region.There are legitimate environmental concerns that demand responses from Petrobras and IBAMA. The strongest argument in favor of development cannot be simply that Brazil has the sovereign right to imitate the worst practices of major oil companies. It must be, rather, that Brazil can use a finite resource to promote a planned transition beyond it. Lula called the discovery in Amapá a “passport to the future” and insisted that Brazil can protect the environment while developing its oil industry. That phrase will only make sense if the income generated is directed by the public authorities both to energy use and to the transition beyond fossil fuels.This requires several commitments, for example:1. Petrobras must remain the operator and principal beneficiary of the field, but it needs to recover sectors of work that were privatized.2. The oil must be tied to the expansion of national refining and petrochemical capacity rather than being treated primarily as raw material for export.3. Contracts must maximize the use of Brazilian technology, equipment, shipbuilding, skilled labor, and research.4. A defined share of revenues must be allocated to Amapá and other northern states for sanitation, housing, hospitals, schools, and resilient infrastructure, with safeguards against the speculative disorder already emerging in Oiapoque.5. Indigenous and coastal communities must participate in decisions and receive effective and guaranteed protection, not merely public relations promises.6. Oil revenue must finance the transition: public renewable energy systems, electric mass transit, ecological restoration, and adaptation to climate damage disproportionately caused by rich countries. It is a false choice to contrast externally imposed austerity in the name of the climate with imprudent domestic oil exploitation that reproduces private and foreign enrichment.The battle over Morpho is only beginning. The well may prove smaller than the headlines suggest, or it may confirm that the Equatorial Margin is the next great petroleum province of Brazil. Either outcome should be determined by scientific evaluation, not financial enthusiasm or political slogans. Environmental risks must be investigated with full transparency, and Petrobras should meet higher standards precisely because it acts on behalf of the Brazilian people.Nevertheless, the guiding principle is already clear. The oil lies in Brazilian territorial waters, the license was granted under Brazilian law, and the company with 100% participation in the block is Petrobras. Decisions about exploration and production belong to Brazil. No external power can plausibly claim that ExxonMobil has the right to drill rapidly off Guyana—under the shadow of a dangerous territorial dispute—while Petrobras must retreat from exploiting resources that clearly belong to Brazil. That rule would not be environmentalism; it would be the old hierarchy of the hemisphere dressed in green: the North extracts, finances, and commands; the South preserves, imports, and obeys.Brazil must reject that hierarchy. It should develop Morpho if the reservoir is commercially viable and if Brazil’s strict environmental and social requirements can be met. It should do so through Petrobras, linking the oil to national industrialization, social investmentm and an accelerated energy transition. Sovereignty is not only the right to drill. It is the power to decide, to regulate, to retain valuem and to transform a natural patrimony into collective capacity. The oil beneath the Equatorial Atlantic does not belong to Washington, nor to ExxonMobil, nor to foreign editorial boards. It belongs to Brazil, and it is up to Brazil to decide what future to build from it. (Jacobin)Translation: Orinoco TribuneOT/JRE/SL