Many may not know, but Brazil is experiencing a historic opportunity to solve their problems in education, health and unemployment. Petrobras, after more than 30 years of research of its technicians in the area of pre-salt discovered the largest reserves, still under evaluation, estimated at around 80 billion barrels of oil, which put us among the seven largest in the world.
The pre-salt reserves of the stretch of the coast of Espirito Santo to Santa Catarina, 300 km distant from the coast. Are an average depth of 2000 m from the surface to the seabed and over 5000 m and drilled rock salt. Technology to this challenge is held by few companies in the world and Petrobras to
leader in the industry.
Alerted by Petrobras, the Brazilian government withdrew the entire area not pre-salt bid auctions conducted by the National Agency for Oil, Gas and Biofuels (ANP), because there was no more risk and the reserves are huge. By current law, although stocks are a monopoly of the Federal Union (Article 177 of the Constitution), once produced, oil is to belong to those who had withdrawn (Article 26 of Law 9478/97), leaving the state with the rock empty. Each company tries to produce as quickly as possible, otherwise the ANP may withdraw his grant, making it impossible to make the country energy planning and controlling the total production.
The government decided to amend the law otherwise would transfer wealth discovery for oil companies, content to receive only the royalty and special guests of the current legislation, which is less than 50% of the oil produced. In oil producing countries, the state retains over 84% of share, well above that seen in Brazil. Another difference lies in the ownership of oil. While here it is the companies that produce, is outside the state.
Investments
The pace of investments will be dictated by the necessity of extracting oil. For large companies would take many resources to draw as soon as possible. But, will the country uncontrolled increase production? Common sense says no and the example of Mexico’s there as a warning: they had large reserves in 1996, Drew unfriendly and may eventually become oil importer.
