Brazil’s equatorial margin may hold between 10 billion to 30 billion bbl of untapped resources, which means it could be critical to offsetting anticipated declines from the country’s prolific but aging pre-salt resources to the south.
However, the region’s future as a new frontier is still very much up for debate. Exploration risk, regulatory obstacles, and execution timelines will determine whether those volumes are realized in time to extend Brazil’s production runway well into the next decade.
One of the biggest near-term indicators will come when the results of the Morpho-1 exploration well are published. Petrobras is the operator and recently said it expects to finish drilling the well in August.
That well and the wider region, which includes the oil basin of interest known as the Foz do Amazonas, were the subject of a recent expert panel at this year’s Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston.
The Morpho-1 well was brought up several times during the discussion because so much appears to be riding on its success. Petrobras is planning to spend $2.5 billion, or more than a third of its total exploration budget, by drilling 15 exploration wells in the equatorial margin by 2030.
But that plan depends heavily on Petrobras being granted the permission to drill in the first place by Brazil’s environmental regulator, the Brazilian Institute for Environmental and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA).
This is according to Jonilton Pessoa, the executive manager of exploration for Petrobras.
