Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - investors

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.

With the final voting of the new regulatory model for Brazil´s O&G market, Petrobras confirms it will control local development in order to let local industry catch up to the demand.The Brazilian O&G market development speed is directly dependent on the shipbuilding industry and the specialized equipment and services industry. The hard truth is that none of these local supporting industries are presently capable of supplying the Brazilian O&G demand and it is clear that it will take quite a few years for the local industry to catch up to this demand, even then in many cases, such as shipbuilding, this accelerated growth will only be possible through partnerships with leading international shipbuilders.

With the expected growth of the Brazilian O&G market and high potential for new discoveries, new national and international O&G operators are preparing for or already undertaking exploratory campaigns. We will be taking a look at these new operators and also at how the established players are going about E&P in Brazil.The first new player we will be looking at is HRT Oil & Gas, which is a new national operator, founded in 2009. HRT O&G is a company belonging to the HRT Participation Group, an O&G market consultancy company founded by a prominent geologist Marcio Rocha Mello PhD, who worked for Petrobras for 25 years. HRT`s initial targets are the Brazilian and West African sedimentary basins.