Oil Reserves in Brazil
In the year 2007, undersea oilfields were discovered off the coast of Brazil that were believed to hold billions of barrels of oil. The country had hope that they would become a major energy player like Venezuela or Mexico. But today, reflecting back almost six years later the future did not go as they had planned. Oil production is still and the oil industry is subdued. Brazil “might have to scale back its expectations, former energy officials, oil executives and advisers say.” (Forero, 2014)
Brazil’s offshore oilfields are seemingly dangerous to big oil companies. There are other, more hopeful, energy sources in Africa, Canada, and the United States. “These companies have the financial muscle and engineering capacity and technologies to move around the world,” said Ramón Espinasa, an oil specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington in the same article written by Forero. The “pre-salt” oil was so overrated. Promises of up to 240 billion barrels were made but when drilling took place, the wells came up dry. Projections today are less ambitious, about “4.7 million barrels a day within a decade.” (Forero, 2014)
Still, some experts believe that even the lower estimate is still a long shot. Petrobas, the state-controlled oil company, is ran by many mandates and regulations. As the lead operator, Petrobas has a minimum prize of 30 percent in new pre-salt fields. With this, they are also required to sell gasoline at extremely low prices which has put the company in debt. Petrobas is responding to their increasing debt by delaying the creation of new oil fields in Peru, Colombia, Africa and the Gulf of Mexico, and selling the already pre-existing assets on those areas.
Contrary to their unfortunate past, the business is fighting back. Their competition oil company declared bankruptcy in 2008 and in that same year, Petrobas claimed to have 82 per cent of their 144 exploratory wells had turned up with oil. Another success was the auctioning of the Libra oilfield to Royal Dutch Shell, France’s Total and two Chinese giants that would partner with Petrobras to develop it. “The government has to get this oil flowing sooner rather than later,” said David Mares, an energy scholar.
The oil reserves in Brazil are an extremely big deal. It was estimated that the Pre-Salt oil fields contained more oil than Saudi Arabia. If Brazil were to become a huge energy supplier for the world through oil, it would change the dynamic of the earth. I remember reading about this in our assigned reading, Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global power, and something about it blew my mind. The fact that Brazil utilizes sugar cane as fuel instead of oil is so incredibly hopeful for the world. Brazil has all of this oil at its fingertips but instead the country utilizes more sustainable energy techniques. Maybe, dimwits like the president-elect of the United States, will look at the drive and ambition of Brazil to be sustainable and reflect it upon his own country. I enjoyed reading this article and examining this issue.
"Brazil Saw Itself as an Up-and-coming Oil Power. So What Happened?" Washington Post. The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.
Favelas and Urban Planning
Brazil’s favelas are one of the most complex neighborhoods in the world. They are shantytowns that are poverty-stricken but are considered the middle class of society. The majority of the homes have electricity and running water but they do not have an advanced sewage system. In Rocinha, Brazil’s largest favela, the sewage “ flows down a large channel in the middle of houses.” (Carneiro, 2014) Dirty and crowded, the favelas make it difficult for an outsider to have any desire to visit but the residents have open minds about the areas they call home.
In an article from bbc.com, several different lives of people were explored in the favela, Rocinha. These people have good, honest jobs like being a tour guide or a police officer. Favela residents are working against the stereotype that the favelas are only poor, drug-ridden areas and are trying to give them a more positive first impression. Specifically, an artist in Rocinha named Rodrigo, spray paints happy clowns all over the city to promote political awareness in the community. He says that after the police’s “pacification project”(Hammer, 2013), the streets felt safer and crime rates were much lower. He also received a prize commission after the project to display his artwork at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development that year.
Brazil has the world’s eighth largest economy and is a growing global superpower. The favelas are home to about 6% of Brazil’s population- that’s about 180,000 people. They stand together in their overcrowded towns to fight drugs and crime. The favela residents organized “neighborhood associations and soccer clubs, and recruited favela youths by holding bailes funk, or funk parties, on Sunday afternoons.” (Hammer, 2013) They are on the up and coming and always improving. Soon, living in the favelas won’t mean poverty- it will just be a way of life.
The favelas are a weird topic for me to study. My curiosity tells me that I want to go and see them, but my brain tells me their too dangerous. I would love to go and see their failing infrastructure and see how they are stacked so close but the high crime rates scare me. It would certainly be a learning experience, but I do not know if I would be able to handle it emotionally. The favelas are so poor that all I would want to do is help. I also really enjoyed reading about each of the individual stories of the favela residents. It was interesting to hear about Maria, the mother of two girls that are in university in Brazil. She never finished school when she was younger but she is currently back in school and occasionally she has to ask her daughters for help with her math homework. It was eye opening to see that everyone who is working in the favelas gets paid just enough to support himself or herself. It’s a hard life living in the favelas, and this topic just reminded me of the severity of it.
"Favela Life: Rio's City within a City." BBC News. N.p., 09 June 2014. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
Hammer, Joshua. "A Look Into Brazil's Makeover of Rio's Slums." Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
Water Quality Management in Rio
Rio’s beaches are world renown for being pristine. Their natural beauty draws in tourists and locals alike, but a hidden risk factor lurks just beyond the sand. Rio’s waters are extremely polluted. So polluted that sailors in the bay are told not to swallow any of the water and to avoid floating obstacles because they can be anything- from bed frames, TV’s, couches, and even dead animals. “The beach reflects the deep blue sky, but up close breaks into brown waves laden with plastic bags, leaving bits and pieces of rubbish on the sand” (Carneiro, 2014) Rio’s Deputy State Secretary said that only about 34 per cent of Rio’s sewage is treated, the rest of which just spilled out raw into streets and waters.
In order to have the Olympic games in Rio in 2016, the country promised to clean up the infamously filthy Guanabara Bay. They have invested about one billion dollars into sanitation projects. For example, ‘Eco Boats’ are used to “scoop up rubbish from the bays waters” (Carneiro, 2014) and ‘eco barriers’ are placed at the mouths of rivers to stop large amounts of solid waste from entering the bay. According to the campaign co-coordinator of the NGO My Rio, the level of fecal substance in the bay is about 200 times greater than the legal limits in the US. Not only does this water contain environmental pollutants but it also contains several human viruses, considering that the water is full of human waste.
Even today, after the Olympic games, the water in Brazil is still extremely contaminated. It is said that swimmers need to only ingest three teaspoons of water in order to be almost certain that they will contract a virus. In March 2015, sampling at one of the lagoons in which Olympic rowing took place, revealed an astounding 1.73 billion adenoviruses per liter (Barchfield, 2016).
This water quality is horrifying. When we are in Brazil I am going to stay far away from the water and maybe even the beaches in general. In one article I was reading it said that even walking on the sand could be harmful. I am also disguised that our Olympic athletes has to swim in this water. It is so unhealthy for them and they are the countries number one athletes, I cannot believe that they actually had the Olympics in Rio. The city is too poor in the first place and the pollution doesn’t make it any better of a place to hold the games. I wish the country had done more to clean up the waters not just for the Olympians but also for the environment. Not many species of plants and animals can live in such highly contaminated areas, so their species biodiversity has to be decreasing. Overall, an extremely depressing issue to research.
Carneiro, Julia. "Rio's Olympic Waters Blighted by Heavy Pollution." BBCNews. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
In the year 2007, undersea oilfields were discovered off the coast of Brazil that were believed to hold billions of barrels of oil. The country had hope that they would become a major energy player like Venezuela or Mexico. But today, reflecting back almost six years later the future did not go as they had planned. Oil production is still and the oil industry is subdued. Brazil “might have to scale back its expectations, former energy officials, oil executives and advisers say.” (Forero, 2014)
Brazil’s offshore oilfields are seemingly dangerous to big oil companies. There are other, more hopeful, energy sources in Africa, Canada, and the United States. “These companies have the financial muscle and engineering capacity and technologies to move around the world,” said Ramón Espinasa, an oil specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington in the same article written by Forero. The “pre-salt” oil was so overrated. Promises of up to 240 billion barrels were made but when drilling took place, the wells came up dry. Projections today are less ambitious, about “4.7 million barrels a day within a decade.” (Forero, 2014)
Still, some experts believe that even the lower estimate is still a long shot. Petrobas, the state-controlled oil company, is ran by many mandates and regulations. As the lead operator, Petrobas has a minimum prize of 30 percent in new pre-salt fields. With this, they are also required to sell gasoline at extremely low prices which has put the company in debt. Petrobas is responding to their increasing debt by delaying the creation of new oil fields in Peru, Colombia, Africa and the Gulf of Mexico, and selling the already pre-existing assets on those areas.
Contrary to their unfortunate past, the business is fighting back. Their competition oil company declared bankruptcy in 2008 and in that same year, Petrobas claimed to have 82 per cent of their 144 exploratory wells had turned up with oil. Another success was the auctioning of the Libra oilfield to Royal Dutch Shell, France’s Total and two Chinese giants that would partner with Petrobras to develop it. “The government has to get this oil flowing sooner rather than later,” said David Mares, an energy scholar.
The oil reserves in Brazil are an extremely big deal. It was estimated that the Pre-Salt oil fields contained more oil than Saudi Arabia. If Brazil were to become a huge energy supplier for the world through oil, it would change the dynamic of the earth. I remember reading about this in our assigned reading, Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global power, and something about it blew my mind. The fact that Brazil utilizes sugar cane as fuel instead of oil is so incredibly hopeful for the world. Brazil has all of this oil at its fingertips but instead the country utilizes more sustainable energy techniques. Maybe, dimwits like the president-elect of the United States, will look at the drive and ambition of Brazil to be sustainable and reflect it upon his own country. I enjoyed reading this article and examining this issue.
"Brazil Saw Itself as an Up-and-coming Oil Power. So What Happened?" Washington Post. The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.
Favelas and Urban Planning
Brazil’s favelas are one of the most complex neighborhoods in the world. They are shantytowns that are poverty-stricken but are considered the middle class of society. The majority of the homes have electricity and running water but they do not have an advanced sewage system. In Rocinha, Brazil’s largest favela, the sewage “ flows down a large channel in the middle of houses.” (Carneiro, 2014) Dirty and crowded, the favelas make it difficult for an outsider to have any desire to visit but the residents have open minds about the areas they call home.
In an article from bbc.com, several different lives of people were explored in the favela, Rocinha. These people have good, honest jobs like being a tour guide or a police officer. Favela residents are working against the stereotype that the favelas are only poor, drug-ridden areas and are trying to give them a more positive first impression. Specifically, an artist in Rocinha named Rodrigo, spray paints happy clowns all over the city to promote political awareness in the community. He says that after the police’s “pacification project”(Hammer, 2013), the streets felt safer and crime rates were much lower. He also received a prize commission after the project to display his artwork at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development that year.
Brazil has the world’s eighth largest economy and is a growing global superpower. The favelas are home to about 6% of Brazil’s population- that’s about 180,000 people. They stand together in their overcrowded towns to fight drugs and crime. The favela residents organized “neighborhood associations and soccer clubs, and recruited favela youths by holding bailes funk, or funk parties, on Sunday afternoons.” (Hammer, 2013) They are on the up and coming and always improving. Soon, living in the favelas won’t mean poverty- it will just be a way of life.
The favelas are a weird topic for me to study. My curiosity tells me that I want to go and see them, but my brain tells me their too dangerous. I would love to go and see their failing infrastructure and see how they are stacked so close but the high crime rates scare me. It would certainly be a learning experience, but I do not know if I would be able to handle it emotionally. The favelas are so poor that all I would want to do is help. I also really enjoyed reading about each of the individual stories of the favela residents. It was interesting to hear about Maria, the mother of two girls that are in university in Brazil. She never finished school when she was younger but she is currently back in school and occasionally she has to ask her daughters for help with her math homework. It was eye opening to see that everyone who is working in the favelas gets paid just enough to support himself or herself. It’s a hard life living in the favelas, and this topic just reminded me of the severity of it.
"Favela Life: Rio's City within a City." BBC News. N.p., 09 June 2014. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
Hammer, Joshua. "A Look Into Brazil's Makeover of Rio's Slums." Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
Water Quality Management in Rio
Rio’s beaches are world renown for being pristine. Their natural beauty draws in tourists and locals alike, but a hidden risk factor lurks just beyond the sand. Rio’s waters are extremely polluted. So polluted that sailors in the bay are told not to swallow any of the water and to avoid floating obstacles because they can be anything- from bed frames, TV’s, couches, and even dead animals. “The beach reflects the deep blue sky, but up close breaks into brown waves laden with plastic bags, leaving bits and pieces of rubbish on the sand” (Carneiro, 2014) Rio’s Deputy State Secretary said that only about 34 per cent of Rio’s sewage is treated, the rest of which just spilled out raw into streets and waters.
In order to have the Olympic games in Rio in 2016, the country promised to clean up the infamously filthy Guanabara Bay. They have invested about one billion dollars into sanitation projects. For example, ‘Eco Boats’ are used to “scoop up rubbish from the bays waters” (Carneiro, 2014) and ‘eco barriers’ are placed at the mouths of rivers to stop large amounts of solid waste from entering the bay. According to the campaign co-coordinator of the NGO My Rio, the level of fecal substance in the bay is about 200 times greater than the legal limits in the US. Not only does this water contain environmental pollutants but it also contains several human viruses, considering that the water is full of human waste.
Even today, after the Olympic games, the water in Brazil is still extremely contaminated. It is said that swimmers need to only ingest three teaspoons of water in order to be almost certain that they will contract a virus. In March 2015, sampling at one of the lagoons in which Olympic rowing took place, revealed an astounding 1.73 billion adenoviruses per liter (Barchfield, 2016).
This water quality is horrifying. When we are in Brazil I am going to stay far away from the water and maybe even the beaches in general. In one article I was reading it said that even walking on the sand could be harmful. I am also disguised that our Olympic athletes has to swim in this water. It is so unhealthy for them and they are the countries number one athletes, I cannot believe that they actually had the Olympics in Rio. The city is too poor in the first place and the pollution doesn’t make it any better of a place to hold the games. I wish the country had done more to clean up the waters not just for the Olympians but also for the environment. Not many species of plants and animals can live in such highly contaminated areas, so their species biodiversity has to be decreasing. Overall, an extremely depressing issue to research.
Carneiro, Julia. "Rio's Olympic Waters Blighted by Heavy Pollution." BBCNews. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.