These things take time: Petrobras boss says new oil rules for Brazil not ready.
Brazil’s oil regs revamp slows
Petrobras boss Jose Sergio Gabrielli said a review of Brazilian oil laws isn’t yet finished and there is no timeline for delivery to the president.
The global credit crunch and economic slowdown has led to the delay, Gabrielli told reporters today in Brasilia.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered a review of the country’s oil-rights auctions after the November 2007 announcement that state-run Petrobras had discovered a 5 billion- to 8 billion-barrel field near Rio de Janeiro. The Tupi field was the largest discovery in the Americas in three decades. All offshore areas near Tupi were pulled from an auction set for the same month.
“We are still working and there is no deadline,” Gabrielli said in a Bloomberg report. “The world economic situation changed.”
The committee, which also includes ministers and the head of the national petroleum regulator, was supposed to have handed Lula its report in September.
Energy Minister Edison Lobao, a member of the committee, said 13 March that the report was nearly complete and would be presented to Lula “soon.” He also said committee members favored the creation of a new state-owned oil company to own and manage the rights to un-leased areas for the government.
Lula, Lobao and Gabrielli have all said that existing lease contracts owned by Petrobras, US supermajor Exxon Mobil, UK gas giant BG Group, Portuguese outfit Galp Energia SGPS, Spain’s Repsol YPF and others wouldn’t be changed under any new system.