Not All Glitters in the Black Gold: Uncertainties and Environmental Threats of the Brazilian Pre-Salt

Abstract

Technologies used for offshore oil exploration, in increasingly remote and extreme environments, potentiate new environmental threats in contemporary societies. In this context and from a theoretical-analytical perspective associated with Environmental Sociology, based on qualitative research results developed between 2013 and 2016, this article aims to comprehend the treatment of Pre-salt environmental threats in Brazil, a sociotechnical enterprise considered as strategic for national development from the governmental point of view. The researchers argue that the possible environmental consequences, even in face of unquantifiable uncertainties, were addressed, mainly from a perspective of measurable and controllable risks, in two of the main stages of the Pre-salt environmental arena: media and environmental licensing process. This treatment did not encourage a consistent public debate on the issue nor any governmental actions about possible unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences that characterize the technological systems, as represented by the Pre-salt.

Environmental sensitivity analysis of environments affected by the oil spill on the Brazilian coast

“…We must remember that the extraction of oil on the Pre-salt layer already warns of risk to the Brazilian coast (Viglio et al, 2017), and this event showed the total lack of preparation of the Brazilian government in the fight against oil. The data on the consecutive oil spills that occur on the coast, of course on a smaller scale, are difficult to access, and often are not even reported by the media.…”