Over the past few years, Brazil has held several very successful oil auctions under production-sharing contracts in its pre-salt layer, attracting major oil companies to its prized offshore oil area. Now President-elect Jair Bolsonaro wants to open more of the pre-salt assets—an area currently exclusively in the hands of state oil firm Petrobras—to private investors, hoping to earn US$31 billion (120 billion Brazilian reais) that could help narrow Brazil’s massive budget deficit. However, as Bolsonaro prepares to take office on January 1, 2019, his transition team may need to negotiate how different Brazilian states and municipalities could divide the revenues from the potential sale of stakes in more pre-salt fields to foreign oil firms. This uncertainty is not welcome news for Big Oil, which has expressed interest in the area that has been explored to some extent and proven to hold much more oil than initially thought. The area […]