Not even former President Jair Bolsonaro, whom environmentalists branded a criminal, dared drill in this pristine Amazon-mouth region. Yet Lula, the self-styled climate champion who returned to Brazil's top office with support from climate activists, rammed through a license previously rejected and is now celebrating this oil discovery near the Amazon river. Hypocritically, the left cries energy transition while their real priorities are power and oil revenue.

This discovery is not a passport to the future. but rather the same broken pattern expanding. Indigenous communities near Oiapoque have long been shut out of consultation before this find, with cover-up efforts to hide environmental damages after a spill in January. More oil means more blocks, more risk, on land where calls to be heard have gone unanswered. Lula cannot celebrate it while ignoring who pays for it.

InLula 2023,returned Lulato won the presidency on a green platform. Now, chasing hundreds of billions of dollars as an oil-export decline is expected when pre-salt runs dry by 2040, he's betting on the Amazon estuary — one of Earth's least-studied ecosystems, its currents too unpredictable for easy cleanup. Even before any oil ships, rainforest is being cleared around Oiapoque and migration is out of control. Principles, it turns out, have a price: the payoff was simply too juicy.