The Amazon's Oil Boom: Concessions Cover a Chile-Sized Bloc of Rainforest

Hungry for oil revenue, governments and fossil fuel companies are moving even further into one of the world's last great wildernesses, according to a new study in the open-access journal Environmental Research Letters. The total area set aside for oil and gas in the Western Amazon has grown by 150,000 square kilometers since 2008, now totaling more than 730,000 square kilometers—an area the size of Chile. 
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Oil and gas roads are considered major drivers of deforestation, especially in pristine places.  Research has long shown that whenever an access road is built into the Amazon, destruction follows, including illegal logging, overhunting, slash-and-burn agriculture, and colonization. 

"Furthermore, in the Amazon, oil and gas projects keep expanding into extremely remote locales, and so new access roads have the potential to open up some of the most intact remaining forests on Earth," Finer told mongabay.com.  "One of our key findings in the paper is that there are at least 35 hydrocarbon discoveries across the western Amazon that have not been developed yet, and this number will surely grow as exploration continues.  If each one brings with it a new access road system, some of the last remaining Amazon wilderness areas could be in trouble."
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In all, the study found documented 35 confirmed or suspected new oil and gas discoveries, especially in eastern Ecuador, northern Peru, and in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. 

"Moreover, additional new discoveries are likely in coming years as all five countries aggressively promote increased exploration," the researchers write in the paper. 

However, according to their findings, the massive impacts of oil and gas production could be mitigated—if not wholly eliminated—if governments and companies started treating the Amazon like off-shore oil and gas in the oceans. 

"This model treats the forest as an ocean where access roads are not a possibility and the drilling platform is essentially an island in the forest accessed only by helicopter and/or river transport," said co-author and former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, now a fellow with the Blue Moon Fund.  "It essentially signifies roadless development."

Instead of building access roads that soon attract colonizers—and destruction—the industry flies equipment and personal in-and-out via helicopter.  This is a model already in use at a Camisea natural gas project in southern Peru as well as a number of other sites, according to the paper. 

"These projects have complicated social issues with indigenous communities, but in terms of technical best practice, they are exemplary because all access is by air and/or water and the flowline routes are not used as roads," the researchers write. 

The scientists also argue that the offshore model is economically competitive with the more traditional road-access model, and may even prove cheaper.

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