Brazil may reap geopolitical uncertainty reward

Investor interest in the country’s oil sector should grow, particularly given challenges elsewhere

There can be no argument that Brazil’s pre-salt oil province is a world class asset—the play has the best deep-water reservoirs in the world in terms of well productivity, high success rates and scalability. Production out of the pre-salt has risen fast. In August, state-owned oil and gas firm Petrobras achieved daily and monthly production records of over 3mn bl/d. Today, the pre-salt is responsible for around 60pc of total Brazilian crude production. Petrobras is also aiming to improve its attractiveness to investors—with an aggressive divestment strategy to exit non-core activities and reduce its monumental debt profile. Nor do the results of the country’s dual pre-salt bidding rounds hel