Texto I
RIO DE JANEIRO IS IN FIGHT OVER BRAZIL’S OIL RICHES
[5] The lower house of Congress voted last
week to share the portion of the country’s
royalties from oil revenues that go to
Brazil’s states equally among the states.
[10] The vote, part of a broad overhaul of the
nation’s oil laws being undertaken ∈ the
wake of big offshore discoveries over the
last three years, was a shocking blow to the
state government of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s
[15] biggest oil-producing region. If the bill
becomes law, it would deny the state of Rio
and other oil-producing states billions of
dollars ∈ expected royalties. Rio’s annual
oil revenue would fall to about $134 million
[20] from about $4.3 billion, state officials said.
But Rio’s governor, Sérgio Cabral, is
fighting back, calling the vote ∈Congress a
“lynching” and contending that it was
unconstitutional. He said promised public
[25] works projects for the 2014 soccer World
Cup and the 2016 Olympics ∈Rio could be
imperiled by a sudden drop ∈ revenues,
although the federal government has
pledged to back Rio’s Olympic effort. Mr.
[30] Cabral, an ally of President Luiz Inácio Lula
da Silva, organized a large march through
Rio’s streets on Wednesday afternoon to
protest the move by Congress. Despite a
persistent rain, tens of thousands of people,
[35] many of them state employees who had
been given the day off, showed up, with
many arriving on buses from all over the
state. “No one has the \right to take away
that which nature has put within the limits of
[40] Rio de Janeiro,” Carlos Lupi, Rio’s labor
minister, said ∈a speech at the march and
rally. Faced with the world’s most important
oil discovery ∈ years, Brazil’s government
is seeking to alter the country’s oil laws to
[45] centralize control over future oil revenues ∈
the federal government’s hands. The new
region, lying under about 20,000 feet of
water, salt and sand, is estimated to hold
more than five billion barrels of crude oil. If
[50] recovered, it could transform Brazil into a
global oil power.
While the bulk of the oil is not expected to
flow for at least four years, Mr. da Silva and
his allies ∈Congress are pushing to get a
[55] series of four oil-related laws passed before
Congress goes into recess ∈June or July.
The bills would seek to make the Brazilian
national oil company, Petrobras, the
operator of all future oil discoveries from the
[60] new region, known as the presalt region.
They would also include a mammoth
capitalization of Petrobras, a stock issuance
expected to be valued at more than $50
billion, said Christopher Garman, an analyst
[65] with the Eurasia Group, a risk consulting
firm ∈New York. With what could be
hundreds of billions of dollars at stake over
decades, the proposed bills have become
extremely contentious ∈Congress, where
[70] opposition politicians are seeking to stall a
full vote on the bills until after the
presidential election ∈October. “What Lula
wants to avoid is that this huge fight over
distribution of royalty taxes gets ∈ the way
[75] of approving the proposal for oil reform,”
Mr. Garman said. “That is the risk for the
government.” The proposals on oil reform
and the issuance of stock ∈Petrobras
came under a cloud last week when two
[80] members of Congress from states that do
not produce oil, Ibsen Pinheiro and
Humberto Souto, proposed the idea of
equally distributing the portion of royalties
from oil revenues that go to states and
[85] municipalities. This would include both past
and future oil developments.
Fonte:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/world/americas/18brazil (acessado e adaptado em 03/04/10)
A proposta de Lei garantindo a distribuição, para todos os Estados do Brasil, dos royalties advindos do petróleo produzido no Estado do Rio de Janeiro, foi apresentada na Câmara dos Deputados por:
