The Marina News Agency reported that the United Nations (UN) published, last Wednesday, March 26, “that it recognizes the expansion of the Brazilian maritime territory by 360 thousand km², in a region that extends from the mouth of the Oiapoque River (AP) to the northern coast of Rio Grande do Norte, covering the sedimentary basins of the mouths of the Amazon, Pará-Maranhão, Barreirinhas, Ceará and Potiguar rivers – called the Equatorial Margin.”
This decision means an increase in the limit of the Brazilian Continental Shelf, which previously represented 200 nautical miles of national domain over these waters. "With the expansion of this part of the so-called Blue Amazon, Brazil recognized its sovereign right to explore the natural resources (such as oil) present in this area, both on the seabed and in its subsoil. In addition to gas and oil, polymetallic nodules could be found in this new maritime sector," highlighted the website defensa.com.
The proposal was analyzed by UN experts and supported by the Navy, Petrobras, and the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels (ANP).
In February of this year, members of the Brazilian Continental Shelf Study Plan (LEPLAC) participated, along with the Brazilian delegation, in the 63rd Session of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) in New York, USA. At that meeting, the analysis of the Equatorial Margin submission was concluded, and the analysis of the East-South margins began. It took seven years of interaction between Brazilian technicians and CLCS experts for the request to be addressed, providing a framework for defining Brazil's maritime boundaries.
"This achievement is the result of the continuous work of sailors, researchers and diplomats of the Interministerial Commission on Marine Resources (CIRM) in the important task of expanding our boundaries, increasingly expanding our Blue Amazon. This expansion brings with it all the wealth of living and non-living resources that constitute a true heritage of Brazilian society ," said CIRM Secretary Rear Admiral Ricardo Jaques Ferreira .
"The Equatorial Margin region that Petrobras is currently interested in is within 200 miles, but there may be some oil block that will be discovered and extend beyond this mountain range and that falls into this new area that now only the Brazilian State has the right to explore ," added the director of Hydrography and Navigation of the Navy, Vice Admiral Marco Antônio Linhares Soares .
The CPG news portal highlighted that: "This additional area is equivalent to the entire territory of Germany. Brazil will now be able to explore for resources such as oil, natural gas, and minerals found at the bottom of the sea in this new region."
It should be noted that Brazil still has unresolved claims and that the next request to be considered by the UN concerns a strip of land and subsoil extending from São Paulo to Paraíba in the northeast, known as the Southeastern Margin. This is the largest area claimed by Brazil, at 1.5 million km².
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