Fund ideas: from Cabinet Chief Dimla Rousseff
Brazil weighs up pre-salt oil fund
Brazil may create a fund to pay for education and other social programmes using cash from sales of oil from the country's pre-salt riches, Cabinet chief Dilma Rousseff said, according to reports.
New regulations to govern the exploration of the so-called pre-salt fields may include a “new social fund” to ensure Brazil’s population benefits from the nation’s oil wealth, Bloomberg quoted Rousseff telling reporters during a visit to the US this week.
The fund would be used to pay for investments in education, science and technology and to fight poverty, she added.
“When you have this amount of oil, you need to avoid the so-called oil curse - a lot of oil and a lot of poverty,” Rousseff said.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has given the commission in charge of drafting the regulations until the end of August to send him an initial proposal, Rousseff added.
Brazil’s pre-salt fairway hosts oil deposits beneath a layer of salt resting as much as 3000 metres beneath the ocean surface and another 3000 to 5000 metres below the seabed.
Rousseff said she blieves it unlikely that the regulations will dampen interest among foreign investors and oil companies in the pre-salt fields.
Brazil offers “access to reserves in a stable country, without war and without ethnic problems”, Bloomberg quoted her as saying.
“We are extremely attractive,” she added.