Brazil boosts naval power to protect oil bonanza

[ocpagu]

As it bids for great power status, Brazil is boosting its naval power in the South Atlantic with an ambitious submarine program to protect its huge deep-water oil reserves and project its growing influence.

The emerging powerhouse already boasts Latin America's largest navy, but its aging fleet, including the Sao Paulo aircraft carrier -- formerly the French Navy's Foch -- nine British-built frigates and five coastal diesel-electric submarines, is in urgent need of modernization.

"The fleet is currently inadequate to carry out its assigned missions" in the South Atlantic, an area Brasilia regards as of high strategic value, Nelson During, chief editor of Brazil's respected defense website DefesaNet, told AFP.

Under the National Defense Strategy unveiled in 2008, the navy was tasked with developing a force to protect the country's huge "sub-salt" oil reserves, the Amazon river basin and its 7,491 kilometers (4,655 miles) of coastline.

The oil fields, located off Brazil's southeast Atlantic coast beneath kilometers of ocean and bedrock, could contain more than 100 billion barrels of high-quality recoverable oil, according to official estimates. In a speech to the Navy's top brass in June, President Dilma Rousseff stressed that the buildup, including the acquisition of the country's first nuclear-powered submarine, was a key "instrument of deterrence."

Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/brazil-boosts-naval-power-protect-oil-bonanza-000043654.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. George W Bush created this tension when he decided to flex his muscles

by reactivating the US Fourth Fleet after it had been retired for decades in order to scare Latin American progressive leaders into fear-induced paralysis, instead of steadily following their original plans.

DU members read some of the articles at the time, like this one from Reuters, with its hard spun headline:

Saturday, September 20, 2008
‘Americans out to get our oil’: Brazil frets as US revives Fourth Fleet

SAO PAULO: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned on Thursday that the resurrection of a US naval fleet in Latin America may signal that Washington covets huge new oil reserves off Brazil’s coast.

The US Navy is re-establishing the US Fourth Fleet, which was decommissioned 58 years ago, to combat drug trafficking, provide disaster relief and help with peacekeeping missions in Latin America and the Caribbean. But the return of the fleet has been met with widespread scepticism in Brazil and elsewhere in the region, where many see a US military presence as a threat to sovereignty.

“The (Brazilian) Navy plays an important role in protecting our subsalt reserves, because the men of Fourth Fleet are almost there on top of the subsalt areas,” Lula said in a speech inaugurating a new oil platform in southern Brazil. “Our Navy has to be the guardian of our offshore oil platforms to protect our patrimony, because before you know it some wise guy will come along and say: ‘This is mine, it’s at the bottom of the ocean anyway, so it’s mine.’”

Since state-run energy company Petrobras surprised the oil world last November by announcing the world’s second-biggest oil find in 20 years, conspiracy theories have abounded in Brazil that a foreign power might try to snatch the country’s offshore oil wealth. US officials have tried to assuage those concerns, stressing that the Fourth Fleet will not be an offensive force and that it will respect Brazil’s maritime claims.

More:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C09%5C20%5Cstory_20-9-2008_pg4_9

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If circumstances had not conspired to prove Brazil needed a strong defense now, Brazil wouldn't feel it's time to create one. The world has changed considerably, and strength will be needed for the Latin American countries to develope and sustain their rightful sovereignty.