Brazil: Oil auction gets new competition from Mexico

For the first time in more than seven decades, Mexico opening its oil industry and this is creating competition for Brazil’s auction reported Bloomberg.

International oil companies with the technical and financial capacity to operate offshore projects will be reviewing what both countries offer, Helder Queiroz and Olavo Colela, officials at Brazil’s oil regulator, said in an interview Tuesday.

While Mexico is giving foreign operators a first crack at a region with “immense potential,” Brazil offers contract terms known to bidders, Queiroz said.“For offshore activities there is real competition,” Colela, a bidding round adviser to ANP’s board, said at Bloomberg’s office in Rio de Janeiro. “Mexico has something Brazil had back in 1998, 1999. Brazil had stuff nobody had knowledge of.”

Brazil is also grappling with a buyers market for oil assets as producers sell fields around the world to raise cash and cut costs following a plunge in oil prices.

Full content: Bloomberg

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