Brazil President Rousseff vetoes parts of forest law

BBC, 05/25/2012

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has vetoed parts of a controversial bill which regulates how much land farmers must preserve as forest.

Among the 12 articles which President Rousseff rejected is an amnesty for illegal loggers.

Brazil’s farmers’ lobby had argued that an easing of environmental restrictions would promote food production.

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Brazilian president likely to veto parts of new forest bill

Marcelo Teixeira and Maria Carolina Marcello – Reuters, 05/24/2012

May 24 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is likely to veto some controversial aspects of a forest bill passed by the Congress last month as pressure mounts against the text days before the country hosts a large UN conference on sustainable development.

The bill, a revision of Brazil’s Forest Code, grants partial amnesty to landowners who had illegally cleared some of their forests until as recently as 2008, relaxing the legal requirements for reforestation of these areas.

The text also reduces significantly the amount of vegetation that should be left untouched at riversides throughout the water-rich country.

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Heads of terms signed with Magellan Minerals over Horizonte’s Agua Azul gold project in northern Brazil

PRNewswire/MarketWatch, 05/23/2012

TORONTO — Horizonte Minerals Plc, (aim:HZM)CA:HZM +5.71% (‘Horizonte’ or ‘the Company’) the exploration and development company focused in Brazil, announces the signing of Heads of Terms between Magellan Minerals Ltd (‘Magellan Minerals’), a Canadian gold exploration companyCA:MNM +7.50% , and the Company’s wholly owned subsidiary HM do Brasil Ltda (‘HM’). The Heads of Terms, which remain subject to definitive binding documentation, provide Magellan Minerals with an option to earn up to a 70% interest in the Company’s 1,553 ha Agua Azul do Norte gold property (‘Agua Azul’ or ‘the Property’), located in the Carajas mining region, northern Brazil.

Overview

Magellan has the option to earn an initial 51% interest in the Agua Azul project for a total cash consideration of US$320,000 staggered over a 36 month period, together with a minimum exploration expenditure

Minimum exploration expenditure is US$1,500,000 over the 36 month period including a minimum of 2,000m drilling.

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Brazil fights illegal logging to protect Amazon natives

AFP, 05/21/2012

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil said Monday it was working hard to stop illegal logging in Amazon rainforest land inhabited by the ethnic Awa people, a group said to be threatened with extinction.

“The Brazilian state must accomplish this task with the utmost determination and we are working hard on it,” Maria do Rosario, the minister in charge of human rights, told foreign reporters.

A Brazilian government survey estimates there could be “up to 4,500 invaders, ranchers, loggers and settlers” occupying just one of the four territories inhabited by the Awa, whose total population stands at no more than 450.

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Brazil’s leader faces defining decision on bill relaxing protection of forests

Simon Romero – The New York Times, 05/16/2012

President Dilma Rousseff is facing one of the defining moments of her presidency as pressure builds on her to veto a bill that would open vast protected areas of forests to ranching and farming, potentially reversing Brazil’s major gains in slowing Amazon deforestation.

The Forest Code, which Congress approved in April at the urging of powerful agricultural groups, is an effort to overhaul Brazil’s 47-year-old legislation providing forest protection. The bill has emerged as a very delicate issue for Ms. Rousseff ahead of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held here next month.

The bill would effectively give amnesty to landowners who illegally deforested areas before 2008, drawing the ire of environmentalists. If the legislation goes into effect, it could allow landowners in the Amazon to reduce obligatory forest cover to 50 percent from 80 percent, and could lead to the loss of as much as 190 million acres of forest, according to the government’s Institute for Applied Economic Research.

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Brazil moves to cut hotel costs for Rio+20 summit, prices that promoted delegate cancellations

Stan Lehman – AP/Yahoo News, 05/16/2012

Brazil is taking steps to lower the spiraling cost of accommodations during the United Nations’ upcoming conference on sustainable development, the office of President Dilma Rousseff said Wednesday.

The statement said the steps could bring reductions of more than 60 per cent for the cost of housing at the Rio+20 conference in Rio de Janeiro, where authorities faced sharp criticism for skyrocketing hotel costs and shortcomings in available rooms.

As many as 50,000 people are expected to flood into Rio for the June 20-22 event even though the city has a hotel capacity of just 33,000 beds. Critics have accused the city’s hotel sector of taking advantage of the spike in demand to charge exorbitant rates, often several times the normal prices.

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As the clock ticks, trees fall in Brazil’s Amazon

Scott Wallace – National Geographic, 05/14/2012

*Scott Wallace was a Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center in 2009

As Brazil braces for president Dilma Rousseff’s forthcoming decision on whether to sign or veto recent legislation that would alter the country’s Forest Code, rights groups are decrying a surge in illegal land grabs that is wrecking environmental havoc and threatening vulnerable tribal populations.

According to the rights organization Survival International, a gold rush mentality seems to have taken hold of loggers, ranchers and settlers in the eastern Amazonian state of Maranhão, as intruders bore their way deeper into reserve areas set up to protect the forests of the Awá tribe. In addition to 355 contacted members of the tribe, about 100 Awá remain uncontacted, making them one of the very last groups of nomads still roaming the forests of the eastern Amazon. The majority of the 60 or more uncontacted tribes that still survive in the Amazon inhabit the more secluded and remote western regions on the vast Amazon Basin.

Survival has launched a public campaign in recent days that includes a video featuring British film star Colin Firth, best known for his portrayal of a stammering King George in the blockbuster hit “The King’s Speech.” Looking into the camera, an earnest Firth urges supporters to call on Brazil’s Justice Minister to send agents into Maranhåo to halt the destruction. “One man can stop this,” says Firth, “Brazil’s Minister of Justice. He can send in the Federal Police to catch the loggers and keep them out for good.”

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Push for ethanol sours in Brazil amid low sugar prices

Leslie Josephs – The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires, 05/13/2012

Sugar prices near 20-month lows have raised questions over Brazil’s future as a leader in both the sugar and ethanol industries.

The South American nation is the largest grower of sugar cane, which can be used to make sugar or ethanol from fermented sugar-cane juice. Its cane fields are growing old, and Brazil is grappling with how to reinvigorate them amid low prices and years of neglect in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

The industry is also trying to plot a course for ethanol production at a time when Brazil’s government—which determines how much ethanol is used in ethanol-gasoline blends and whose state-controlled oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA,PBR -2.80% controls gasoline prices—is focusing attention on large offshore oil reserves.

Brazil’s coffee growers have harvested 25% of the Robusta crop

Isis Almeida – Bloomberg, 05/11/2012

Coffee growers in Brazil, the world’s largest producer, have harvested almost 25 percent of this year’s robusta crop, according to broker Flavour Coffee.

The country, which is the biggest grower of the arabica variety and ranks second in robusta production, will harvest 50.4 million bags of coffee in the 2012-13 season, the Ministry of Agriculture’s crop-forecasting agency, known as Conab, said yesterday by e-mail. Arabica output will total 38.1 million bags and robusta 12.3 million bags, it said. A bag weighs 60 kilograms (132 pounds).

“New crop arrivals keep improving,” the Rio de Janeiro- based broker said in a report e-mailed yesterday, adding that less than 15 percent of the robusta harvest was available because drying and peeling processes were not done yet.

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How Brazil is making an example of Chevron

Paul M. Barrett, Peter Millard – Bloomberg Businessweek, 05/10/2012

Last Nov. 7 something went wrong at a deep-sea oil well operated by Chevron (CVX) 230 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro. As a massive drill bit punctured reservoir N560, roughly 3,500 feet beneath the ocean floor, monitors revealed pressure much higher than technicians expected. The next day a routine flyover of the field, called Frade, in the Campos Basin, revealed oil on the water’s surface.

Chevron dispatched remote-controlled submarines, which found oil seeping through fissures on the sea floor directly above N560. The blowout preventer, a three-story-tall valve assembly, automatically cut off oil flow at the wellhead. This would not become another BP (BP)disaster, in which the blowout preventer notoriously failed. Still, George Buck, president of Chevron’s Brazil subsidiary, ordered the Frade well shut down. Chevron sent 18 vessels in rotation to contain the oil on the surface, and it readied pyramid-shaped steel caps to cover the seepage points. Workers completed the job in just four days. Buck saw the situation as under control. And technically, it was.

A petroleum engineer in his mid-forties, Buck has an MBA and has worked for Chevron for 23 years. He is 6-foot-5, slender, soft-spoken, and earnest to the point of social awkwardness. He arrived in Brazil in 2009, having worked from Alaska to Texas to Indonesia. He lives with his family in Rio’s fashionable Ipanema beach district. He is not a man about town. After three years in Brazil, he speaks little Portuguese, relying heavily on translators. Nevertheless, on the Frade spill, Buck thought he had made himself quite clear. “Chevron takes full responsibility for this incident,” he said at a press conference in Rio on Nov. 21. At a congressional hearing in Brasília two days later, he added, “Sincere apologies to the Brazilian people and the Brazilian government.”

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