Brazil to join major oil-exporting nations in OPEC+ group

Brazil’s government on Tuesday approved joining OPEC+, a group of major oil-exporting nations, signaling the country’s evolution into a major oil state just nine months ahead of hosting the United Nations’ annual climate summit.

Brazil’s government on Tuesday approved joining OPEC+, a group of major oil-exporting nations, signaling the country’s evolution into a major oil state just nine months ahead of hosting the United Nations’ annual climate summit. The National Council for Energy Policy’s approval came in response to an official invitation in 2023. The group includes the 12 members of OPEC, the longstanding group set up to coordinate oil production to stabilize markets, plus 10 more significant oil-producing nations with Russia by far the largest. Though non-OPEC members agree to cooperate with OPEC nations, Brazil won’t have any binding obligation such as production cuts, Mines and Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira said at a news conference. Silveira called OPEC+ merely “a forum for discussing strategies among oil-producing countries. We should not be ashamed of being oil producers. Brazil needs to grow, develop and create income and jobs.” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva began his third term in 2023 touting himself as an environmental defender, and has worked to reduce deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and to protect Indigenous rights. But he has also argued that new oil revenues could finance a transition to green energy. In recent weeks, he has pressed the country’s environmental regulator to approve exploratory drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River, one of the most biodiverse regions of the world.