ANP expects to auction more than 320 oil blocks this Wednesday

Two auctions by the National Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANP) will put 326 oil and natural gas exploration and production blocks up for grabs this Wednesday (7). According to the agency, the auctions are the largest ever held.

The offers include 13 areas in the pre-salt and two sectors in the Ceará Basin, which is part of the Equatorial Margin, considered the new exploration frontier.

The public competition will be at the ANP headquarters, in the center of Rio de Janeiro. The agency, linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), is the regulatory body for the oil industry in the country.

Pre-salt

At 9 am, the first auction begins, the 4th Cycle of the Permanent Production Sharing Offer, which offers 13 exploration blocks in the pre-salt, on the Southeast coast.

There are five areas in the Campos Basin (Magnetite, Tourmaline, Hematite, Larimar and Azurite) and eight in the Santos Basin (Jade, Aragonite, Cruzeiro do Sul, Opala, Granada, Cerussite, Ruby and Rhodochrosite).

Currently, the pre-salt ─ which is under a thick layer of salt, which can reach 7 thousand meters deep ─ is the main production area in the country. In September, for example, it accounted for 82.6% of Brazilian oil and gas.

19 bidding companies were qualified. Among them are Petrobras and other national and multinational companies, such as BP (United Kingdom), Chevron (United States), Equinor (Norway), Shell (Anglo-Dutch), Sinopec (China) and TotalEnergies (France).

By law, in the sharing auction, Petrobras has the so-called right of preference. That is, you can choose whether or not you want to be an operator in the exploration block. If so, the winning consortium will have a share of at least 30%.

Basins for concession

Starting at 2pm, the 6th Cycle of the Permanent Concession Offer is scheduled, which puts 313 exploration blocks in dispute in 22 sectors, which include terrestrial (onshore) and maritime (offshore) exploration, such as post-salt on the Southeast coast.

Two sectors belong to the Ceará Basin, located on the Brazilian Equatorial Margin. The area is seen by the oil industry as a promising frontier.

Recent significant discoveries in Guyana and Suriname reinforce this expectation. In Brazil, Petrobras announced last week the second discovery of oil in an exploratory well in the Foz do Amazonas Basin, which is also on the Equatorial Margin.

Although the Equatorial Margin covers the coast of states in the North and Northeast Regions, only the Ceará Basin is included in this Wednesday's auction. Other blocks are not being studied for possible offers from the ANP in subsequent rounds.

The 6th Cycle also includes five blocks, in the Potiguar and Tucano Sul sectors, of areas of so-called “marginal accumulation”, fields where oil production is inactive or which were returned to the ANP due to lack of economic interest.

In total, 46 companies are qualified to participate. However, as with the sharing model, qualification does not necessarily mean that the company will make offers.

Deleted blocks

Last Monday (5), the ANP reported that it removed five blocks from the auction in the Parnaíba Basin, which covers Maranhão and Sergipe.

The decision was adopted after the ANP's technical area identified “a material error in the application of the necessary cuts based on the socio-environmental criteria determined in the Joint Manifestation of the areas”.

Previous auctions

In October last year, the 3rd Cycle of the Sharing Offer ended with five of the seven blocks in dispute sold. At the time, the signing bonuses reached almost R$104 billion, with a minimum investment forecast in the exploration phase of R$451.5 million.

The auction for the 5th Concession Offer Cycle took place in June 2025, with the signing of 34 block concession contracts. The collection of signing bonuses was around R$989 million, with minimum investments estimated at R$1.5 billion in the exploration phase.

Sharing x concession

Discovered 20 years ago, pre-salt oil proved to be so significant for Brazilian production potential that it led the government to change, in 2010, the regime that authorized companies to explore submerged wealth.

Therefore, in the pre-salt areas the sharing regime is in force. In this model, the production of surplus oil (balance after payment of costs) is divided between the company and the Union.

When an auction takes place in an area, the winning company is the one that offers the largest portion of the oil to the Union.

This rule is different from the concession model, valid in other oil and gas blocks. In the concession, the risk of investing and finding, or not, oil lies with the concessionaire, which becomes the owner of all the oil and gas that may be discovered.

In return, in addition to the signature bonus upon winning the auction, the oil company pays royalties and special participation (in the case of large production fields) to the government.

Along with the sharing model, a state-owned company was created, Pré-Sal Petróleo (PPSA), based in Rio de Janeiro and linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, which represents the Union in receiving revenue. In other words, PPSA sells the oil delivered by oil companies to the Union.

Replacement and dynamism

The Brazilian Institute of Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels (IBP), a private entity that brings together companies in the sector, recalls that the projection is that, without further discoveries, oil and gas production in the country is expected to decline in the 2030s.

For the president of IBP, Roberto Ardenghy, holding auctions is essential to speed up the replacement of reserves.

"In an industry with long-term investments and which demands predictability, the offer of new areas is a necessity," he told Agência Brasil.

The IBP adds that the auctions also stand out for offering several land and marginal areas.

"This characteristic attracts a profile of smaller companies, which makes new businesses viable, develops the supply chain and strongly boosts local economies", says Ardenghy.

"We understand that companies operating in the Brazilian oil and gas sector see the auction as a good opportunity to replenish reserves in a market with legal security, consolidated logistics routes and far from regions with geopolitical instability, such as the Middle East", he concludes.

Interest from oil companies

The Institute for Strategic Studies of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Zé Eduardo Dutra (Ineep), a study center linked to the Single Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), considers that the combination of high oil prices, geopolitical tensions on the international scene and the consolidation of Brazil as an important global producer tends to increase the interest of oil companies.

Ineep research coordinator, Francismar Ferreira, highlights that Petrobras did not exercise the right of preference in any of the blocks. For him, this condition increases the possibility of expanding the operations of multinational oil companies.

“Thus, upon completing 20 years of its discovery, the pre-salt may have an increasing portion of its energy potential appropriated by external agents”, he assesses.

Ferreira projects that, in the offshore portion, the post-salt areas of the Southeast basins (Espírito Santo, Campos and Santos) tend to attract large oil companies and, possibly, some independent medium-sized national and foreign companies.

He considers that, despite being located in basins considered mature, the areas have consolidated infrastructure for exploration and production.

The Ineep coordinator advocates that Petrobras actively participate in the auction, in order to ensure greater state coordination over the country's exploration areas.

“Without a Petrobras with relevant participation and coordination capacity, Brazil runs the risk of deepening the denationalization of reserves and production and limiting the State's ability to transform oil wealth into energy sovereignty, industrial development and national development”, he maintains.

Socio-environmental concern

While the oil industry and the government look at the auctions with interest, activists and some civil society entities view them with concern.

The Arayara Institute, a non-governmental organization dedicated to socio-environmental issues, even filed a Public Civil Action in Federal Court asking for the auction not to take place.

The organization filed five actions that question the offer of blocks and point out overlaps with indigenous and quilombola territories, agrarian reform settlements, conservation areas and artisanal fishing regions.

To Agência Brasil, the president of Arayara, Juliano Bueno, attributed the exclusion of five blocks by the ANP on Monday to pressure from the NGO, “recognizing technical errors that were denounced by the studies and diagnoses promoted by civil actions”.

Arayara intends to hold a series of demonstrations in front of the ANP headquarters on Wednesday.