But as we on this blog have always said, capitalism is pro-environment as long as it doesn't interfere with business.
Greg Hands, the UK’s trade minister, successfully lobbied Brazil on behalf of BP and Shell to address the oil giants’ concerns over Brazilian taxation, environmental regulation and rules on using local firms. Hands met with Paulo Pedrosa, Brazilian deputy minister for mines and energy, and “directly” raised the concerns of UK-based oil firms Shell, BP and Premier Oil over “taxation and environmental licensing”. Pedrosa said he was pressing his counterparts in the Brazilian government on the issues. The lobbying drive appears to have borne fruit. In August, Brazil proposed a multibillion-dollar tax relief plan for offshore drilling, and in October BP and Shell won the bulk of deep-water drilling licenses in a government auction.
The document also reveals that the UK pressured Brazil to relax its requirements for oil and gas operators to use a certain amount of Brazilian staff and supply chain companies. British diplomats described the weakening of the so-called local content requirements as a “principal objective” because BP, Shell and Premier Oil would be “direct British beneficiaries” of the changes. The UK’s drive to soften the requirements continued on the day after the meeting between Hands and Pedrosa, with a senior DIT official leading a seminar on the subject at the headquarters of Brazil’s oil and gas regulator.
Rebecca Newsom, senior political adviser at Greenpeace, said: “This is a double embarrassment for the UK government. Liam Fox’s trade minister has been lobbying the Brazilian government over a huge oil project that would undermine the climate efforts Britain made at the UN summit in Bonn. “If that wasn’t bad enough, Fox’s department [for International Trade (DIT)] tried to cover it up and hide its actions from the public, but failed comically.”
No comments:
Post a Comment