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Threats of Brazil’s new oil drilling frontier

Nature Sustainability (2025)Cite this article

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Oil drilling has been proposed at the mouth of the Amazon River in one of the most protected states in the Brazilian Amazon, Amapá. If the pending project is approved, drilling is likely to go ahead in 19 other oil blocks in this region, where biodiversity and the socio-economic well-being of local populations could be at risk.

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Fig. 1: Areas slated for offshore oil extraction and habitats in the adjacent Brazilian state of Amapá.

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Acknowledgements

This article is dedicated to the memory of Carlos Eduardo Costa-Campos. K.M. is supported by an ‘Ayuda Beatriz Galindo’, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Universities and the Complutense University of Madrid (grant numbers BG22/00121). W.D.C. is supported by ‘Ayudas para contratos Ramón y Cajal (RYC) 2023’ (RYC2023-045231-I), financed by MCIU/AEI/https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033 and by the FSE+. We thank M. C. Guedes and A. L. Guedes for suggestions on earlier versions of this text.

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Author notes

  1. Deceased: Carlos Eduardo Costa-Campos.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratório de Ecologia e Biodiversidade do Território dos Lagos (LEBIOT), Universidade do Estado do Amapá (UEAP), Amapá, Brazil

    Herbert O. B. Duarte

  2. Programa de Pós-graduação em Biodiversidade Tropical (PPGBio), Universidade Federal do Amapá (UNIFAP), Macapá, Brazil

    Karen Mustin, Helenilza Ferreira Albuquerque Cunha, Alan Cavalcanti da Cunha, Renato R. Hilário, Fillipe Pedroso-Santos, Jéssica C. E. Vilhena & William D. Carvalho

  3. Department of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Karen Mustin

  4. Instituto de Pesquisas Científicas e Tecnológicas do Estado do Amapá (IEPA), Macapá, Brazil

    Salustiano V. Costa-Neto & Isaí Jorge de Castro

  5. Laboratório de Fenômenos de Transporte, Hidráulica e Saneamento Ambiental (LFTHSA) do Curso de Engenharia Civil, Universidade Federal do Amapá (UNIFAP), Macapá, Brazil

    Alan Cavalcanti da Cunha

  6. Laboratório de Ecologia (LABECO), Departamento de Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento, Universidade Federal do Amapá (UNIFAP), Macapá, Brazil

    Renato R. Hilário

  7. National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), Manaus, Brazil

    Philip M. Fearnside

  8. Terrestrial Ecology Group (TEG-UAM), Departamento de Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    William D. Carvalho

  9. Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Cambio Global (CIBC-UAM), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    William D. Carvalho

Authors
  1. Herbert O. B. Duarte
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  2. Karen Mustin
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  3. Carlos Eduardo Costa-Campos
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  4. Salustiano V. Costa-Neto
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  5. Isaí Jorge de Castro
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  6. Helenilza Ferreira Albuquerque Cunha
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  7. Alan Cavalcanti da Cunha
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  8. Renato R. Hilário
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  9. Fillipe Pedroso-Santos
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  10. Jéssica C. E. Vilhena
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  11. Philip M. Fearnside
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  12. William D. Carvalho
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Contributions

H.O.B.D., K.M., P.M.F., A.C.d.C. and W.D.C. conceived the research. H.O.B.D., K.M., R.R.H., P.M.F. and W.D.C. wrote the main manuscript text. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to William D. Carvalho.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Luiz Enrique Vieira de Souza for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Duarte, H.O.B., Mustin, K., Costa-Campos, C.E. et al. Threats of Brazil’s new oil drilling frontier. Nat Sustain (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01648-z

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