This has been a year of unenviable environmental firsts for Petrobras, Brazil’s state oil company. In January, an underground pipeline linking the company’s Reduc refinery to an island terminal off Rio de Janeiro ruptured, sending 340,000 gallons (1.3 million liters) of fuel oil into Guanabara Bay. It was Brazil’s biggest oil spill in at least 25 years. And it put Petrobras on the receiving end of the country’s largest pollution fine ever—a $27.7 million penalty levied by the Environment Ministry. Neither mark stood long. Last month, another Petrobras pipeline broke, this one aboveground at the company’s Repar refinery in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná. An estimated 1 million gallons (4 million liters) of crude gushed into the Barigui River and then entered the... [Log in to read more]