Oil majors had big plans for Brazil, but you can’t tell by looking at the country’s offshore drilling these days. After crude was first struck in the pre-salt formation in the seas off Rio de Janeiro, producers including BP Plc and Total SA were ready to flock to Brazil with billions of dollars in investments. For the country, it appeared to augur an unprecedented era of oil bounty. Nine years later, the promise remains unrealized: Spain’s Repsol SA and China Petrochemical Corp. are the only foreigners operating an offshore drilling rig. So what happened? While the crude-price collapse and an ongoing graft probe are part of the story, Brazilian officials who failed to auction enough exploration licenses and slowed approvals with miles of red tape were also major contributors to the boom that never came to be, according to Joao Carlos de Luca, a member of the IBP lobby […]