Brazil flexes military might around new oil fields

NITEROI, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazil deployed warships, fighter jets and thousands of troops off its southern coast on Friday, starting two weeks of military maneuvers aimed at showing the world it can defend vast new oil reserves.

The exercise, dubbed Operation Atlantic, will simulate an attack by a fictitious enemy on oil platforms and pipelines both on and off shore along the coastline of the states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Espirito Santo.


The maneuvers are the latest in a national debate over how to manage a slew of recent deep-sea oil finds that could thrust Brazil, which still occasionally imports crude to meet domestic demand, into the top 10 of the world’s oil producers.

“This is an exercise that is intended to dissuade, a show of force,” Admiral Edlander Santos, the commander of the operation, said at a ceremony near Rio de Janeiro marking the beginning of the exercise.

Reuters