LatinNews Daily - 06 July 2023

* Brazil’s mining & energy ministry (MME) has signed contracts for oil exploration in four offshore blocks of pre-salt oil fields near the country’s south-eastern coast. The minimum investment in the exploration phase is expected to be R$1.44bn (US$297m), according to the MME. A consortium led by the French energy company Total Energies, in partnership with Malaysia’s state oil company Petronas and Qatar’s state-owned QatarEnergy, and Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras, was awarded the Água Marinha block; Petrobras was awarded the Norte de Brava block; the UK-headquartered BP was awarded the Bumerangue block; and Petrobras and the UK-headquartered Shell were jointly awarded the Sudoeste de Sagitário block. According to the latest figures from the federal oil and gas agency (ANP) tied to the MME, pre-salt oil accounted for 77.8% of Brazil’s total oil production in May, registering nearly 3.2m barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd). The deputy minister for mines & energy, Efrain Cruz, has hailed these contracts as a step towards “consolidating Brazil as a leader in oil production in South America.” At the event celebrating the signing of the contracts, Cruz also said that the MME would push for exploration in the off-shore oil fields of the Equatorial Margin, near the northern state of Amapá – an area which the environment agency (Ibama) had previously blocked Petrobras from exploring.