SÃO JOÃO DA BARRA, Brazil, Jul 10 (IPS) – With barely 10 years in operation, the port of Açu is now the second in Brazil in cargo transport and seeks to turn into an industrial and power transition hub. However to this point it has contributed little to native growth, inflicting environmental and social harm.
The megaproject, which is introduced as “the biggest non-public deep-water port and industrial complicated in Latin America”, occupies 130 sq. kilometres within the municipality of São João da Barra, some 30 kilometres from town and 320 kilometres northeast of Rio de Janeiro, within the state of the identical title.
It channels 30% of Brazil’s oil exports and 24 million tonnes of iron ore transported via a 529-kilometre-long pipeline from the mine of the Brazilian subsidiary of the British transnational Anglo American, in Conceição do Mato Dentro, a municipality within the neighbouring southern state of Minas Gerais.
In 2023, 84.6 million tonnes of cargo will go via this port, 27% greater than in 2022. This development averages 30 % yearly because it began working in October 2014, in response to its administration.
“Right here you may arrive and depart by sea and land with out the queues of vehicles that have an effect on different ports, reminiscent of Santos,” Brazil’s largest, situated within the neighbouring state of São Paulo, mentioned Eugenio Figueiredo, president of the Port of Açu Operations administration firm.
Its location exterior city centres is among the native benefits he talked about to a gaggle of journalists, together with from IPS, who visited the port on 4 July. As well as, the primary export merchandise don’t arrive by highway. Oil comes by sea from offshore wells within the Atlantic and iron ore by pipeline.
The depth, of 14.5 metres on the terminals sheltered inside a canal and 25 metres on the superior jetty within the sea, is one other beneficial level to facilitate entry for big ships. Being non-public quickens the operations, missing the paperwork of public ports, in response to Figueiredo.
To date, the corporate studies that it has invested the equal of three.7 billion {dollars} on this mega-infrastructure, and plans to take a position an additional 4.070 billion over the subsequent 10 years.
Oil, power transition and business
Being some 80 kilometres away from the Campos Basin, the place offshore oil fields had been found within the final 4 many years, permits Açu to supply a base for oil firms that’s not solely a port. A helicopter pad permits the speedy transport of individuals and light-weight tools to the oil platforms.
The big industrial space already hosts two versatile pipeline factories for deepwater oil exploration and extraction. A 1300 megawatt pure gas-fired thermal energy plant can also be working within the space and one other with a capability of 1700 megawatts is beneath building.
Of the 130 sq. kilometres of the economic port complicated, 40 kilometres make up the Caruara Non-public Pure Heritage Reserve, the biggest conservation space of restingas, a coastal ecosystem of sandy, not very fertile soils and low vegetation. The remaining 90 sq. kilometres are beneath port and industrial occupation, with 22 firms already put in.
The reserve was created after the corporate that owns it delimited the world of the port and industrial complicated, with two aims: the environmental safety of the restinga and, within the half closest to the city centre, to forestall encroachment by the inhabitants.
The complicated additionally goals at power transition, initiated by the pure gas-fired energy vegetation. Plans embody the longer term manufacturing of inexperienced hydrogen, harnessing the nice potential of photovoltaic and wind energy generated within the sea close to the coast, the place beneficial winds blow.
The more and more massive wind turbine blades should be manufactured regionally, and house out there for this business is one other benefit of the Açu complicated, Figueiredo mentioned.
Logistical bottleneck
The port is now looking for to draw extra agricultural exporters from the closest states, Minas Gerais and Goiás, already current since 2020. For this, Minas Port, one of many firms working within the port, inaugurated on 4 July two warehouses with a capability for 65,000 tonnes of grain.
“It’s a super-port, with a implausible terrain, profitable within the export of iron ore and oil, and with a strategic location within the centre-east of Brazil, which calls for massive scale ports. However it has a fragility: its land connection”, mentioned economist Claudio Frischtak, specialised in infrastructure and president of Inter.B Consultoría, interviewed in Rio de Janeiro.
The port is distant from main agro-export manufacturing areas and entry roads are insufficient. Its future enlargement is dependent upon a railway connecting to the prevailing community of Brazil’s Vale group, the nation’s largest iron ore exporter, which lies some 300 kilometres away, he mentioned.
That distance could possibly be greater than halved if Vale builds an 80-kilometre part already agreed with the native authorities, and one other 87-kilometre part beneath examine.
However Prumo Logística, managed by US fund EIG and proprietor of the port of Açu, is hoping {that a} railway shall be constructed between Rio de Janeiro and Vitoria, the capital of the central-eastern state of Espírito Santo, which would cut back to 50 kilometres the stretch wanted to attach the port to an intensive rail community, Figueiredo mentioned.
Furthermore, the success of the economic venture requires attracting traders, a troublesome feat with out “affordable logistics”, with rail and good roads, mentioned Alcimar Ribeiro, an economist and professor on the State College of Northern Rio de Janeiro (UENF).
Financial alternate options to the Açu complicated are mandatory as a result of the Campos basin, a close-by supply of oil, is already “mature”, with a declining manufacturing. “In 2010 it represented 87% of Brazilian oil manufacturing, at the moment solely 20%,” Ribeiro instructed IPS in São João da Barra.
Removed from native growth
The realm of affect of Açu, primarily São João da Barra, with its 36,573 inhabitants in response to the 2022 census, and Campos dos Goitacazes, with 483,540 inhabitants, has been in financial decline for a number of many years, after the sugar cycle ended.
The port presents 7,000 direct jobs, together with these of firms put in within the space, 80% of them to native staff, in response to Caio Cunha, supervisor of Port Relations and the Caruara Reserve.
However most of them are momentary jobs, within the building of port expansions and at present of the second thermoelectric plant, Ribeiro defined.
As well as, native staff are typically low-skilled, with outsiders being employed for extra expert jobs, says Sonia Ferreira, chief of the neighbourhood affiliation SOS Atafona, a seashore district in São João da Barra, which has misplaced greater than 500 houses to erosion by the ocean.
One optimistic impact of the port is that it has sparked younger folks’s curiosity in learning, she acknowledged. However she hopes the port will make structural investments in well being, training and concrete infrastructure, to successfully enhance the standard of native life.
The central drawback is that the megaproject is “an enclave with out social, political and financial pursuits within the surrounding territory, with no connection to native actuality. It solely lacks a wall to separate itself, having its personal heliport, resort and shopping center, for its self-sufficiency”, mentioned sociologist José Luis Vianna da Cruz.
Having automated operations, the port and the businesses situated right here make use of few staff, mentioned this professor on the Fluminense Federal College with a doctorate in regional growth, by cellphone with IPS from Campos.
The megaproject did improve tax revenues for native municipalities, however didn’t scale back poverty nor unemployment within the area.
Da Cruz additionally questions the variety of jobs reported by the port – 7,000 – and argues they’d not compensate for the unemployment attributable to the expropriation of the land of 1,500 households who lived there to make approach for the port and industrial complicated.
Many of those households acquired lower than honest compensation or are nonetheless preventing for his or her rights, he added.
The present homeowners of the port are to not blame. It was the Industrial Improvement Firm of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Codin) which ready the land the place the port is situated at first of this century.
However the salinisation of lagoons and the water desk, which affected farmers and even the water for city consumption, was because of the improper disposal of mud eliminated for deepening the canal the place 11 port terminals had been put in, in response to Da Cruz, writer of a number of research on the socio-environmental impacts of native initiatives.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedAuthentic supply: Inter Press Service
