Doubling Brazil’s Oil Production

ANP Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency is looking at doubling the country’s O&G production and also its proven reserves in the next 10 years. According to Magda Chambriard, ANP’s Director, that is the challenge faced by the local O&G industry. According to Magda, the O&G industry is already receiving 63% of the country’s investments, and Brazil will still need to invest US$400 billion in the next decade in the services area in order to meet the industry’s demands, while sticking to the local content regulations. Brazil has proven reserves to the tune of 15 billion barrels boe. “The demand on a minimum local content figure on projects in the service area for the O&G industry has created a niche of opportunities for Brazilian and foreign companies present in Brazil, that cannot be ignored. It is clear that Petrobras is the company which has more demand of these services, yet there are foreign companies with subsidiaries in Brazil that are also increasing the demand for theses services, such as Shell, BP, and Brazilian operators like OGX and Queiroz Galvão, all having success and expanding their business in the petroleum sector” said Magda. The ANP Director also emphasized that 60 thousand jobs have been created in the country due to the minimum local content regulations and through revamping the shipbuilding industry. She also highlighted that there will be no turning back, that these jobs are here to stay. For the 11th round of tendering for exploration blocks, ANP has decentralized the areas offered in such a way that most blocks are in the Northeast and North of Brazil, except for a few Blocks in the state of Espirito Santo. That is truly a chance from past tendering rounds where most of the Blocks were located in Southeast Brazil. Some industry specialists are claiming that ANP is playing for time in order to have a better grasp of the potential of deepwater pre-salt reservoirs in the Southeast before having to choose which Blocks to place on the tendering schedule. However there is true potential for pre-salt discoveries in Northeast Brazil due to discoveries along the same latitudes in WA. Claudio Paschoa