Weighing up the options: Haroldo Lima
Brazil weighs up oil law rejig
Brazil may reform its oil sector legislation as a result of the announcement by state-controlled Petrobras that the subsalt Tupi discovery has reserves of between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to local media reports.
Haroldo Lima, general director of Brazil's National Petroleum Agency (ANP) told the daily newspaper O Globo that regulatory authorities were drafting proposals to introduce production-sharing contracts for the huge fields now emerging in the subsalt horizon
"Brazil has a wide range of sedimentary basins and we think the regulatory system should address that diversity," he told the newspaper.
Soon after Petrobras had revealed the scale of estimated reserves on Tupi, the Brazilian government said it had decided to cut 41 blocks from the licencing round due to take place later this month. The withdrawn blocks lie close to the Tupi field, or in analagous areas with similar pre-salt geology.
Dilma Rousseff, the Chief of Staff to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Brazil’s de facto energy tsar, will coordinate government efforts to draft the amendments to the 1998 laws that opened up Brazil’s oil sector to foreign investment.