Brazil’s oil regulator will offer a large package of offshore exploration acreage on Wednesday in two permanent-offer rounds, putting deepwater and presalt blocks in the Campos, Santos, Ceará and Espírito Santo basins up for bids.
The National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP) will hold the public sessions on October 7th in Rio de Janeiro. The morning session covers the 4th Permanent Offer of Production Sharing; the afternoon session covers offshore sectors included in the 6th Permanent Offer of Concession.
Together with onshore areas also being offered, the two rounds comprise 331 areas, according to reporting on the offering. All 13 blocks in the production-sharing round are offshore presalt acreage in the Campos and Santos basins, Brazil’s main producing region.
Campos blocks on offer are Azurita, Hematita, Larimar, Magnetita and Turmalina. Santos blocks are Aragonita, Cerussita, Cruzeiro do Sul, Granada, Jade, Opala, Rodocrosita and Rubi. Several of those blocks, including Turmalina, Jade, Cruzeiro do Sul and Larimar, went unawarded in earlier rounds.
Under production sharing, the winning bidder offers the federal government a share of profit oil after costs; state company Pré-Sal Petróleo (PPSA) manages the contracts.
The concession round’s offshore sectors sit in four basins. In Campos they are SC-AP1, SC-AUP1, SC-AUP2 and SC-AP3. In Santos they are SS-AR4 (shallow water) and SS-AP4 (deep water). In Ceará they are SCE-AP2 and SCE-AP3, described as deepwater and ultradeepwater areas that remain relatively lightly explored. In Espírito Santo they are SES-AP2 and SES-AUP3. Concession winners take title to any oil and gas found and pay government participations, while bearing exploration risk.
About 49 companies are qualified for at least one of the cycles, including Petrobras and international firms such as Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, bp, Equinor, TotalEnergies and Chinese and Middle Eastern companies.
The sessions follow a period of oil prices above $100 a barrel tied to instability in the Middle East, and come after environmental agency Ibama authorized Petrobras to drill its first well in the Foz do Amazonas Basin. No Equatorial Margin blocks are included in Wednesday’s offshore offering.
Environmental groups have filed suits challenging parts of the broader round; the ANP has said the blocks do not overlap demarcated indigenous or quilombola territories or environmental protection areas.
The production-sharing session is scheduled for 9 a.m. and the concession session for 2 p.m., Brasília time (BRT, UTC−3), with both to be carried on the ANP’s YouTube channel.
