Can black gold deliver green promises?

Critics take aim at Brazil’s plan to use oil profits to fund conservation efforts, writes Fran Blandy

- Fran Blandy

Can oil, the climate villain, be used to pay for its own demise?

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva thinks so. He is pushing for more oil exploration, including offshore from the Amazon rainforest, while casting himself as a global leader on climate change.

“The world is not yet ready to live without oil,’ Mr Lula, the host of this year’s COP30 UN climate conference, told a local podcast.

“Tam against fossil fuels whenever we can do without them. But until we can, we need to use them. Oil money will help us develop biofuels, ethanol, green hydrogen, and other initiatives)” he said during an event earlier this year.

Brazil is the eighth biggest oil producer and Mr Lula wants state energy giant Petrobras to be the “largest oil company in the world”.

At the same time, he urges world leaders to step up in the fight against the climate crisis and he has pledged zero deforestation by 2030.

Critics say Mr Lula's position is contradictory; others see it as pragmatic.