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Décio Oddone launched the challenge to industry leaders to highlight the challenges of obtaining environmental licensing for promising pre-salt regions and other unexplored areas
Not much pre-salt remains. At a conference in Brasília on Wednesday, Décio Oddone, former director of the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) and current president of Enauta, warned that pre-salt exploration is showing signs of fatigue. Although the Equatorial Margin and the basins of mouth of amazon and Pelotas are very promising as new frontiers for oil exploration in Brazil, the challenge was made to industry leaders to draw attention to the challenges in obtaining environmental licenses for these areas.
He was emphatic in saying that Brazil has exhausted the last frontier of initiatives that can be started and completed in the coming years. What will happen to oil exploration in Brazil after the pre-salt? Oddone, saying at an event called “Future and perspectives of the Oil and Gas sector in Brazil”, organized by the Brazilian Institute of Petroleum and Gas, said: “We do not know, [at least] it is not clear” (IBP). According to him, it has been ten years since the sector has been granted an environmental license to explore unknown territories.
VIDEO: WHAT IS PRE-SALT?
Although Oddone predicted the success of the ANP, he predicted for the sector that “the era of billionaire auctions” was coming to an end. The announcement took place at the beginning of the sixth round of auctions promoted by the agency, which still retained substantial reserves from the pre-salt polygon. Many of the more recent wells drilled have failed. Exploration in the area “was a negative surprise, but it is a reality,” he said.
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If Brazil is not going to open up new areas for oil exploration, defends the former director of the ANP, it must start from a “conscious decision”, after “serious debate”, and not just postpone the issuance of environmental licenses. According to him, the difficulty of this conversation is how the country will continue to finance social policies and generate money without the economic gains of the sector, given the collection of the Union, States and municipalities with royalties and taxes.
More investments in Brazil's energy sector, this includes pre-salt
Oddone says Brazil is struggling to keep up with the energy sector investments needed to reach a daily production of around 5 million barrels by the end of this decade. The extraction of this volume, mostly from pre-salt reservoirs, will boost the country to the position of fifth largest oil exporter in the world.
The former director of the ANP said that it is “acceptable” for Brazil to prohibit drilling in environmentally fragile places such as the archipelagos of Abrolhos (BA) and Fernando de Noronha (PE). “Today you have to be agile in the areas you select to explore,” he said.
Via Valor, O Globo.
