RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil’s oil regulator ANP cut its outlook for petroleum production in Brazil to 4 million barrels a day in 2025 or 2026 from 4.5 million barrels a day in 2022, the agency’s director general Magda Chambriard said on Wednesday.
The reduction comes after a decline in oil prices, an auction of new oil rights last week that received little interest and troubles at state-run Petrobras caused by rising debt, missed production targets and a giant corruption scandal.
Lower prices, Chambriard said, are the main reason for reducing investment in exploration and production in Brazil. Brazil’s oil company association, the IBP, also blames growing government control of the industry.
Chambriard, speaking to reporters in Rio de Janeiro, said she expects Brazil to import 400,000 barrels a day of vehicle fuels, primarily gasoline, in 10 years. Projected imports of gasoline and diesel are more than double the 176,879 barrels that Brazil imported daily during the first nine months of 2015, according to ANP data.
Despite declining fuel demand, spurred by Brazil’s economy facing its worst recession since the 1990s, Petrobras’ 14 Brazilian refineries cannot meet all the country’s needs.
Chambriard also said the ANP is studying a plan to renew some oil-rights concessions granted to Petroleo Brasileiro SA , as Petrobras is formally known, early. The concessions, granted in the so-called “Round Zero” to Petrobras involved some of the company’s most important fields.
The areas represented concessions Petrobras was allowed to keep after Brazil’s government ended the company’s monopoly on Brazilian exploration and production in 1997.
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