By NATASHA DONN news@algarveresident.com
If you could look inside her head, you would probably see cogs whirring and spinning at breakneck speed. Her husband tells us she can start sentences “based on one conclusion and finish them at another”. She is frequently up working until three in the morning and she’s passionate about transparency – something she found lacking in spades in the Algarve since arriving here from South Africa nearly four years ago. Laurinda Seabra has been behind a number of campaigns in the last few years, all of them high profile and, one has to admit, successful.
She helps the “little people” … in 2011 she helped a small beachside restaurant take on property speculators and win back their right to run a business; earlier this year she helped bar owners in Lagos fight council moves to monopolise drinking hours, and now she is pushing for people to have a say in what she calls “the robbery of the century”.
What are we talking about? We’re talking about the fact that the sea a few kilometres away from our coastline is being carved up into deep offshore gas and oil concessions. Concessions reportedly sold to oil giants Repsol and Partex for a comparative song, with “no material benefits to the Algarve whatsoever”.
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The government’s own PSD politician Mendes Bota has criticised the deal in the past for precisely these reasons – citing the obvious dangers of turning the Algarve into “a gigantic drilling field”.
“And the worst of it is that nobody seems to know what is going on!” Seabra expresses frustration with outstretched palms. “People have heard of the Lagosta and Lagostim fields outside Faro and Vila Real, but have they heard of the concessions stretching from Quarteira to Sagres? The whole coastline is being divvied up, and none of us have had a say in it!”
In a bid to pass on information, ASMAA, the Algarve Surf and Marine Activities Association, spearheaded by Seabra, has created an impressive website and is busy publicising the petition, “Say No to Oil and Gas in the Algarve”.
ASMAA contend that “unless something is done by all of us in the next couple of months then the Algarve we know and love is history”.
“Now you can see why I work very often until 3am!” Seabra, a former mechanical engineer with 30 years experience in the petrochemical industry, explains. “We are trying to collate as much information as possible so that people can read it. If they can read, they can learn.”
Thus far the petition is gaining steam and doing the rounds of ASMAA’s 6,280-strong membership. The next immediate move is to approach town halls and exhort them to support the call for more information.
One Algarve mayor, however, has already dismissed ASMAA’s efforts, saying: “Whatever the politics, I trust the Portuguese state. I do not know the terms involved in this matter, but I am sure that the government is being responsible.”
The big question that concerns Laurinda Seabra, and many others, is: can we be sure that the government is being responsible?
