Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - basins

A NSF-sponsored workshop will be held in the coastal town of Maresias, São Paulo, Brazil, from the 4th to the 6th of February 2014, to discuss, plan and define the conceptual basis for developing an International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Drilling Proposal to investigate the Brazilian Equatorial Margin. b) The opening and expansion of the South Atlantic Ocean. The Brazilian Equatorial Margin (BEM) is a passive, stable margin at equatorial latitudes characterized by continuous sedimentary sequences divided among a series of basins. These basins contain a unique record of regional tectonic, biotic, and climatic events from the end of the early Cretaceous to present.

Brazil has been investing in a major effort to increase its exploratory O&G campaign along the countries coast and also inland where major gas reservoirs have been recently located. Unfortunately, this is still not enough as presently Brazil is exploring only 4% of its areas with O&G potential. Of the 7,5 million square kilometers of sedimentary basins located in the country, only 7% have actually been researched, including all the recent major pre-salt discoveries. This points to major untapped O&G potential in the country, the numbers are impressive and point to a need to increase even more the research and exploration of the huge areas still untouched. This further increase in exploration brings various safety and environmental risks along with it.

Starfish Oil & Gas is not exactly a new player, since the company was founded in 1999. As the first private national O&G operator in Brazil and classified as a B class operator by ANP (National Petroleum Agency), Starfish has participation in a variety of onshore and offshore blocks in Brazil and in Angola. The company is structured as a closed capital corporation with capital stock of R$ 82.365 million (US$ 46,533 million, at the current exchange rate). The company´s stock is divided in 502.62 thousand common shares, distributed among 80 shareholders in Brazil and abroad. The first opportunities in the O&G market were identified by the company in the group of licenses granted by the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) to Petrobras in the so-called Round Zero, in August of 1998.

After a nearly perfect drilling campaign on various fronts in 2010, OGX start 2011 with new discoveries in the Campos Basin. Although there was much skepticism at the start of OGX´s creation in 2007, after last year´s performance, the new Brazilian operator, which was created by Brazilian businessman and investor Eike Batista adding to the portfolio of his EBX Group can now easily be considered as a good investment, especially for those who bought in early. Eike´s strategy to hire and partner with Petrobras´s extraordinary geologist and executive Paulo Mendonça was vital not only to gain market value as to bring in deep knowledge of where do drill and how to plan the E&P campaign. It´s important to not that Petrobras´s exploratory success rate more than doubled after Mr.