Ibama Clears Petrobras to Drill Three More Wells in Brazil's Foz do Amazonas Basin

Brazil's environmental regulator Ibama has authorised Petrobras to drill three additional exploratory wells in the Foz do Amazonas Basin, in the state of Amapa, taking the operator to a total of four permitted wells in a block lying 175 kilometres offshore.

The authorisation covers the FZA-M-59 block and was signed by Ibama president Jair Schmitt on Thursday the 3rd. Reuters, in a dispatch carried by TradingView, reported the regulator had cleared Petrobras to drill more wells in the Foz do Amazonas region.

The three additional drilling operations are named Manga, PAD Morpho and Crotalus, and were already contemplated in the original licensing process opened in 2014 by BP plc. That lineage matters for anyone tracking how long frontier acreage takes to reach the drill bit.

Petrobras must submit an updated drilling schedule to the environmental agency within a maximum of 30 days of formally receiving the licence. Ibama also barred the simultaneous use of different drilling platforms and authorised the incorporation of the Amaralina Star (NS-43) rig, conditional on proof of effective waste collection systems and prior inspection by the agency.

The stated purpose of the campaign is appraisal. The wells are intended to assess the potential of a recent oil discovery in the region and to establish whether commercial exploitation is feasible. FZA-M-59 received its initial licence in 2025 and has already shown hydrocarbon indications during testing at the Morpho well, though the commercial viability of the find still needs confirmation.

Ibama's technical staff registered concern about delays in the schedule for protecting local fauna, specifically the management of sirenians such as the manatee. "A lentidao por parte da empresa em executar as tarefas ja pactuadas leva a evolucao e complexificacao dos cenarios," the technical team warned, saying the company's slowness in executing already agreed tasks leads to the evolution and growing complexity of the scenarios.

The acreage sits off the Amazonian coast and is treated as environmentally sensitive, which keeps the project at the centre of arguments over economic development and conservation. Petrobras had secured environmental authorisation in 2025 to begin exploratory activities in the block off the coast of Amapa.

Foz do Amazonas forms part of what is known as the Equatorial Margin, treated as a new frontier for oil exploration in the country. The scale of the operator's ambition there extends beyond a single block: Petrobras has seven further licensing processes under way for neighbouring blocks, including FZA-M-57 and FZA-M-127.

For global crude balances, the sequencing is the point. Commercial exploitation remains conditional on further evaluations and on the stages set out in the environmental licensing process. A discovery indication at one well plus three appraisal permits is the start of a resource assessment, not a supply addition, and the 30-day schedule filing is the first observable step.

The decision was reported on 4 September 2026 by Portal do Zacarias in its Meio Ambiente section, with a photograph credited to Divulgacao/Foresea via Agencia Petrobras. Tempo e Dinheiro attributed its account of the authorisation to Folha de S. Paulo, dated 4 September 2026 at 15:49.