PALP, the Algarve’s self-styled anti-oil platform lead by environmental NGO’s, has come up with a novel Christmas wish-list initiative, publicised through a nationwide email drop as a way of “asking the Prime Minister for a country full of renewable and sustainable energies, without the prospection and exploration of oil and natural gas”.
The prepared letter, which anyone wanting to send simply has to complete with their full name and email address, actually goes out to many more politicians than PM António Costa. Included in the list of recipients are the ministries of the economy, sea and environment, parliamentary groups, all Portugal’s MPs and the Commission for the Environment.
People clicking ‘send’ will find replies coming back very fast from the Green Party, the Algarve’s Left Bloc MP João Vasconcelos and Left Bloc co-ordinator Catarina Martins.
Also replying with the message that “a part of the problem has been resolved” in the rescission last week of four contracts (click here) is PS MP Helena Roseta.
But the bottom line is that the threat of hydrocarbon exploration continues.
Drilling 46 kms off the coast of Aljezur by the Galp/ ENI consortium is on track to start early in 2017 and all efforts now are focussed on trying to get this licence rescinded.
Elsewhere, anti-oil campaigners are looking at 2017 as a ‘major challenge’ in which existing land and sea-based contracts – and concerns that “others could follow” – have all got to be addressed.
At the same time, groups warn that less-obvious threats to the sustainability of the seas are looming in the form of “deep sea mining” (click here).
