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BBC MUNDO RADIO
Author (s): Agencia Globo / Monica Tavares
O Globo - 17/07/2010
Companies participating in the auction gave up before the registration deadline
After leaving the auction of the plant of Belo Monte, Rio Xingu, Pará, just days before the deadline for registration of competitors, contractors Odebrecht and Camargo Correa are now competing to build the dam. Also in dispute is the construction company Andrade Gutierrez, defeated in the April 20 auction. In all, four groups are listed to attend the second largest engineering project in the country. The list is completed by the group Queiroz Galvão and OAS; Mendes Júnior; Serveng-Civilsan and Contern. The latter part of the consortium that North Energy won the bid for the project.
- The analysis is the very low price and good quality guarantee to build the project - said yesterday the consortium's president, José Ailton Lima.
The consortium North Energy can anticipate the completion of the plant of Belo Monte, no Pará, scheduled for October 2015. The decision, however, only be taken one or two years after the start of construction, scheduled for April 2011, after the rainy season in the region. The schedule of civil works was handed over to the National Agency of Electrical Energy (Aneel). Lee said he kept the schedule provided in the announcement, but did not rule out anticipation:
- The intention of the investors is always anticipating the work, in anticipation of revenue. But we will only discuss the possibility with one or two years of work. There is one thing that is bothering us.
The government has rushed to finish the paperwork of Belo Monte. Just yesterday, Aneel empowered the Special Purpose Company (SPC) which will build the project. A list of 18 members of the company among state, construction of energy self-producers and pension funds and investments, was presented Wednesday at the agency. The next step - whose term ends on August 2 - your deposit will guarantee the faithful performance, whose value represents 5.5% of the development or R $ 1.045 billion.
In late August, the consortium believes will get the License Installation construction site. From September this year to April 2011, will be the mobilization and construction of housing. By the end of November, should be granted the license to install the work by IBAMA. Negotiations have already begun.
The consortium is also negotiating with groups to provide turbines. Among them is the so-called European group, formed by Alston, Andritz and Voith-Siemens. Another is an Argentine company Impsa. There are also talks with two groups, one Japanese and one Russian.
Exibir mapa ampliado
* Cash and devastation
* Blackmail
* Arguments poor
News - April 18, 2010
Greenpeace
Designed in the military regime, revived during the blackout of government toucan and carried forward in PT, the plant has everything to leave the country a legacy of bitterzoom
Area of the Xingu River in Para, which will be flooded by the construction of the plant of Belo Monte. © Greenpeace / Marizilda Cruppe
Belo Monte, in the Xingu River where the Lula government intends to plant the third largest hydroelectric dam in the world, has a recent history too ugly. It began in 1979, when federal inspectors finished completing studies on the feasibility of building of five dams on the Xingu river and a Iriri. The social and environmental disaster caused by the construction of Itaipu on the Parana River, which displaced thousands of people drowned and one of our most important national parks, the Seven Falls, together with the financial crisis in which Brazil went then, let's plans Belo Monte forgotten in the closet.
The government of José Sarney desengavetá rehearsed them, but before the impact that the original plan would result in the environment and doubts about the cost of the work that they preferred to continue locked. Weighed heavily on the Sarney's decision to consolidate the resistance of the indigenous peoples of the Xingu to work. They have always been opposed to the plant. But in 1989, they met at the 1st Meeting of Indigenous Peoples of the Xingu and achieved international repercussions of their fight, making the government back for a review of the plans. The door to the dam was opened again during the blackout in the Fernando Henrique.
The original project scope was reduced. The original proposal of five dams, it was with one. And for the plant, instead of conventional, decided to use bulb turbines, which operate on end and require less water area of flooding. This has decreased but has not made the impact of the work more acceptable. She will cause a clearing of nearly 12 000 hectares. Its effects on wildlife, biodiversity and on indigenous peoples who depend for their survival Xingu, according technicians from IBAMA, are still far from having been adequately evaluated.
From the standpoint of economic and financial uncertainties are smaller. The government began by saying that Belo Monte would cost 7 billion dollars. Lately, he walked reviewing this amount to 16 billion. Companies that have applied to the auction of the concession, scheduled to take place tomorrow, Tuesday, April 20, at the headquarters of the National Agency of Electrical Energy (Aneel) in Brasilia, spoke on 30 billion.
Money and devastation
Regarding the energy that Belo Monte will generate, there seems no doubt much more. She will be unable to produce 11 000 megawatts of power that the government promises. Because of that business involved calls 'concessions' to the environment - in fact insufficient to remove the damage it will cause - is forecast to be around his generation of 4000 megawatts per year. Although many questions, coming from all sides, Lula said last month it would Belo Monte in 'law or by force. " So he walked out in the press lately, the president chose the second option.
Forced entry of firms and pension funds at auction and, to appease their ill-will against the business, got no pity in his pocket of the taxpayer. According to the Saturday edition of the Folha de S. Paul (for subscribers only), she will receive financial support, the interest buddies, of course, the good old BNDES. The reporter Janaina Lage reveals that the bank has committed to lend money for up to 80% of the work with a term of 30 years to pay. In fall, is leveraging cash from entrepreneurs with a safe state of energy.
The reporter Gerusa Marques, in O Estado de S. Paul, reports that for one of the consortia, North Energy, the government arrived muscles Chesf. For another, the Belo Monte Energy, pushed Furnas and Eletrosul. In the financial backing, placed on standby funds of employees of state and Eletronorte, which may take up to 35% stake in the venture who is the winner. Also walk waving tax incentives. The same diligence with which responds to the calls of business questions in price and profit, the government has shown with the environmental and social issues. Not to reduce impacts, but to ensure that they will not be stumbling block to the auction.
Miriam Leitao said in his blog at The Globe that the pressure of the Civil House of IBAMA to give the license to install and is critical to allow the auction, it was gross. Officials of the court made clear that the narrow time and lack of information from the Ministry of Mines and Energy prevented the completion to the satisfaction of the assessment of entrepreneurship. His bosses at the time, the Minister of Environment, Carlos Minc, and the president of IBAMA, Roberto Messias, did deaf ears. Everything indicates that even decreased, the Belo Monte project has everything to become an environmental disaster in a region considered of high biodiversity.
Blackmail
The work requires the digging of canals, 30 miles long. The volume of excavation will be about 230 million m3 of earth, bigger than the Panama Canal. It will also require the opening of 260 km of roads to various parts of the plot. Completed, Belo Monte will displace 20 000 people to places no one clearly says they are. This is just the direct social impact. Nobody knows, certainly not in government, where the magnitude of the effects of work on people who live farther from the plant and future depend on a flow whose Xingu, this is already known, will be severely affected.
Why the government decided to move a project so controversial, and rightfully so slept for so long in bins official Brasilia just now, six months of a presidential election? It is not known. Lula has defended his work with old-fashioned nationalist arguments, saying that "they have already destroyed their forests," and insisting it will do it no matter the opposition. Mauricio Tolmasquim, president of the Energy Research Company, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, prefers to defend the work of making threats.
Speech in blackout, no chance this time and the energy of Belo Monte will ensure the comfort of the population in South and Southeast, which is a falsehood. Transmit the energy generated in the North to the other country is not only inefficient, as would require investments in transmission lines that do not currently be made. The bulk of that Belo Monte will generate electro-intensive food industries such as mining and steel companies that produce raw materials for export. In fact, we will be paying for the benefit of employers and others who need our ore and steel to sustain its growth, like China.
"Belo Monte represents Brazil late, clinging to old energy models, which benefit few but have an enormous capacity for social and environmental destruction," says Beatriz Carvalho, assistant director of campaigns at Greenpeace. "At the core of the discussion about Belo Monte is the fundamental question: what model of development we want to ensure that Brazil, today and in coming decades. Defender Belo Monte mean look the country's development in the rearview mirror. "
Poor arguments
Tolmasquim and Roussef, presidential candidate for the PT, insist that the alternative type hydroelectric Belo Monte in Brazil would be the investment in thermal oil or coal, which is at least a myopic view of the problem. They insist that sources of wind and solar generation, of great potential in Brazil, do not lend themselves to large-scale generation. Europeans and Americans disagree. "Germany in late 2009 had 25,800 MW of wind power, Spain, 19 150 MW. Across the European Union, 75 000 MW. In Denmark, representing 20% of energy and in Portugal 15%. The United States has 35 000 MW, "Miriam Leitao wrote in his blog.
"Today, wind and biomass already represent viable options for Brazil and its costs are significantly lower than the generation of nuclear power plants or fuel oil. The cost of wind power is $ 150/MWh and biomass cogeneration plants £ 160/MWh, "says Ricardo Baitelo, Energy Campaign at Greenpeace. "The pricing difference for the $ 83/MWh plant of Belo Monte obviously not worth the serious social and environmental impacts caused by new development. Nuclear and thermal fuel oil cost, on the other extreme, R $ 240/MWh and $ 550/MWh, respectively.
