Brazil to approve new oil auctions "within weeks," Energy Minister Edison Lobao told Reuters on Sunday, opening the door to the first major offer of Brazilian petroleum exploration rights in more than four years.
Brazil to approve new oil auctions
January 17, 2012
Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff will approve the country's 11th oil rights concession auction "within weeks," Energy Minister Edison Lobao told Reuters on Sunday, opening the door to the first major offer of Brazilian petroleum exploration rights in more than four years.
At the auction, Brazil expects to sell rights to explore for and exploit oil and natural gas in 174 areas, half offshore and half on land, the 11th such auction since it ended state-led Petrobras' monopoly and opened the country to outside investment in the late 1990s.
"The 11th round should be authorised by the president within a few weeks.
Only after she has given the approval we can authorise an auction," Lobao said via a translator.
The government also expects to launch its first-ever auction of production-sharing rights in the so-called subsalt region near Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in the second half of the year, Lobao said during a visit to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.The production-sharing auction requires the passage of new royalty legislation which Lobao said will be passed by Congress in the first half of 2012.
Brazil and oil companies operating in the country expect to produce about 7 million barrels of oil a day by 2020, an amount that would allow the South American nation to challenge the United States for the position of world's third-largest producer after Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Under the production-sharing auctions, Petrobras will be the operator and own a minimum 30 percent stake in all areas and owners will share any output with the government, which will sell its oil on its own account.
The areas sold at the concession auction will go to the highest bidder and oil produced will belong to the owners, subjet to the payment of royalty. |
