Belo Monte Dam Bid Won
By Sarah de Sainte Croix, Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO – Despite fierce national and international opposition mounted over several decades and a week of last-ditch legal wrangling, the contract for the controversial Belo Monte Hydro-Electric Dam project went to auction last week and was won by the consortium Norte Energia.
The Xingu River in the Amazon rainforest, photo by Nelson Lage/Flickr Creative Commons License.
José Ailton de Lima, president of the winning group, announced that construction of the dam on the Xingu River in the Amazon rainforest is due to begin within the next six months.
The auction was a swift affair lasting less than seven minutes in the glare of the surrounding socio-environmental controversy. Two of the three original bidders, themselves giants of the Brazilian construction industry, Camago Corrêa and Odebrecht, pulled out just ten days beforehand, leaving only Belo Monte Energia (led by state-owned electricity companies Furnas and Eletrosul,) in the running.
In an attempt to make the bidding competitive, the government hastily put together a second consortium headed up by another state-owned electricity company, Chesf (Companhia Hidro Eletrica do São Francisco). In both consortiums state owned companies make up 49 percent of the stock.
The government capped the amount that could be charged for the sale of electricity produced by the dam at R$83 per MW/hr and bids had to come in lower than this maximum. Norte Energia, predicting their opponents would come back with a bid just short of the maximum, and aware that there must be a five percent difference between bids to avoid a second round of bidding, pitched their winning bid at R$77.97 per MW/hr, successfully undercutting the other team’s R$82.90 per MW/hr.
Film director James Cameron supports the campaign against the Belo Monte project, photo by Steve Jurvetson/Wikipedia Creative Commons License.
Since the dam was first proposed in 1975 environmentalists have been campaigning vociferously against the project which will destroy at least 500,000 square kilometres of virgin Amazon rainforest and displace a number of indigenous tribes.
In a succinct protest, on the morning of the auction Greenpeace activists deposited three tons of manure outside of the Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica (National Agency for Electrical Energy or ANEEL).
James Cameron, director of the highest grossing film ever to date, ‘Avatar,’ visited Brazil accompanied by Hollywood stars Sigourney Weaver and Joel David Moore to lend their support to the campaign against the dam.
In a letter to President Lula the director said, “Avatar is a film about the destruction of the natural world by expanding industrial interests and the consequent impact to Indigenous populations… its unprecedented success indicates the extent to which people, all over the world, are thinking about these issues as never before… You have a great opportunity, as a world leader, to take decisive action in the immediate short-term to demonstrate Brazil’s commitment to these vital issues.”
But it was to no avail. In the seven days preceding the auction the federal courts in Brasilia overturned two injunctions which attempted to prevent the auction from going ahead and the ball is finally rolling on one of Brazil’s most contentious energy projects ever.
4 Responses for “Belo Monte Dam Bid Won”
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[...] starters, this week the Belo Monte Dam moved forward a key step and development was bid and won by a Brazilian conglomerate. Horrible for [...]
This was circumvented in a backroom deal, never addressing the needs of those who will most be impacted, including many businesses, communities and voters who will not see the benefits of this project for another 50 years — the time when the consequences and the cost factors are truly known. More likely, however, is that the consortium will run out of money before the dam is completed, leaving the public holding the bag.
The future benefit they see will be being able to turn on a light switch and have a light turn on. The financial cost is almost certainly going to run over budget, but isnt that the case with any project of this sort of scale? James Cameron should take off his war paint and go home to make another cartoon leaving people who know what they are doing to drastically improve future prospects of avoiding massive blackouts
I guess the international community is very interested in these matters, only cause they’re huge and famous. Many other disasters have being happened around here, have happened and nobody does anything. Belo Monte is just one more. It’s not the worst of all. A lot of people lives under the poverty range. Amazonia is in danger. Corruption is our greatest shame.