Last year, the government of Antonio Costa did a major restructuring, and we saw “energy” being taken away from the Ministry of Economy and transferred to the Environment Ministry. The Environment Ministry was then renamed as the Ministry of Environment and Energetic Transition (Ministério do Ambiente e da Transição Energética).
According to information released to a journalist on 4 February, the Galp / ENI concessionaires say that everything has, in fact, been suspended. And they stated that the withdrawal of the contracts from the DGEG website was only a formality that was already scheduled to take place on 31 January.
ASMAA takes this opportunity to inform all those who have been following the anti-oil drilling legal process currently taking place in the Administrative and Fiscal Court of Loulé, that the court hearing, scheduled for 11 February at 2:00 p.m., was canceled by the court yesterday.
After last October GALP announced, and the Portuguese government publicly confirmed that they were giving up their interest in the Santola concession and abandoning the drilling in Aljezur, but all official requests for clarification have been ignored.
In the last few years and in many circumstances, the only time we can guarantee that there is no disinformation - not to call it lies – coming out of the mouths of politicians, is when they keep their mouths shut. It looks like that once again we are confronted with another blatant example of why politicians have no credibility left.
On 21 December 2018, the Portuguese parliament voted on proposals submitted by three political parties – The Bloco de Esquerda (Left Block), PAN and the Greens. It is interesting to note that only the proposal by the Greens (PEV) was approved, with the other two rejected. Let’s now look at what was proposed in more detail.
We start 2019 preparing for our first day in the Loulé court, which is scheduled for the 11th of February at 14h00 when a preliminary hearing will take place.
2018 was a watershed year for ASMAA as we progressed through the transformation process that started in 2017.
Opinion article by Laurinda Seabra in response to arguments that as the Portuguese government has been "democratically elected", they can do as they please. I disagree.