In comments to Lusa News Agency, Loulé Mayor António Aleixo was dimissive of the request lodged by oil companies. “There is a lack of common sense in approaching the Municipal Council of Loulé with a request of this type when the council has on more than one occasion gone public with its position as regards this current problem for the Algarve.”
The need arises for a backup facility to supplement the periods when the International Airport of Faro, already contracted by the oil exploration firms, is shut.
“They wanted to use the Loulé heliport installations for night time flying,” the Loulé Mayor was quoted as saying, adding that the request was for a minimum 45 day period between September and October.
Loulé was a signatory to the unanimous 19 May decision by the Regional Council of the Algarve expressing its “total opposition to the prospecting and exploration of gas and oil in the Algarve whether on land or at sea.”
The chairman of Partex, which will be working alongside Repsol, explained last month that prospecting would start in early autumn between 40 to 50 kilometres off the coastline.
António Costa e Silva stressed at the time that there would not be any oil rigs coming up in front of beaches, adding that all work “will be conducted under the sea level.”
The Partex chief explained that the mission to find natural resources in Portugal is one of “national sovereignty and only once an inventory has been drawn up of what resources lie beneath the ocean floor should the discussion as to who might or might not explore the country’s mineral wealth take place.”
The Partex-Repsol consortium currently holds the rights to four sites off the Algarve coast.
According to the National Authority for the Fuel Market (ENMC), the prospection for oil at Aljezur and Tavira will be conducted over a period of eight years and at a final estimated cost of four million euros.
Mayors of the Algarve, through the inter-municipal association AMAL, have expressed “displeasure, serious doubts, concerns and enormous scepticism” regarding the matter of prospecting in the region.
They further accused the state of treating the Algarve and its inhabitants with “disdain” since proceedings began.
AMAL claims that even though the process has been ongoing since 2005, the region’s entities have never been “informed or consulted.”
But ENMC President Paulo Carmona said at the time: “It is necessary to do away with pre-conceived ideas.
“There isn’t a country that has discovered energy resources and that hasn’t explored them, and of course we must be careful with the environmental aspects”, he added.
The head of the ENMC insisted that in this current phase of prospecting and exploration, there are no environmental risks. Only if oil or natural gas were to be found and proceedings moved on to a phase of exploration, would it be necessary to carry out a public consultation and study environmental impact, he explained.
“Portugal is not a rich country and we want to develop our natural resources in a sustainable manner,” Paul Carmona stressed, backed by several representatives of exploration companies who guaranteed that “very strict” European environmental standards are being met.