Remaining petroleum potential of Brazil - State of the art 2023

Petroleum and its byproducts will continue to be humankind’s primary energy source for at least 50 years. Brazil is already one of the main suppliers of this raw material and will continue as such for the next decades. Several large sedimentary basins in Brazil are practically untouched by exploration, especially in the deep and ultra-deep water realms. There are also large tracts of unexplored areas in basins that already have discoveries, reserves and hydrocarbon production. The objective of this work is to make predictions about the remaining petroleum potential of the Brazilian basins. The predictions are made based on the big data bank acquired by the petroleum industry in Brazil in the last 83 years, based on the most updated concepts in petroleum geology, and mainly on my 45 years of experience as an explorationist. Our final forecast for the remaining petroleum potential of Brazil lies in the range of 50-100 billion barrels of oil equivalent recoverable (boer) (prospective resources, already identified or not, but still needed to be discovered). The basins that will contribute the most to realizing this potential are Santos/Campos, Pará-Maranhão/Foz do Amazonas/Barreirinhas, Pelotas and Paraná; besides, in a lesser scale, but still significant, Sergipe-Alagoas, Espírito Santo, Camamu-Almada, Solimões and Parnaiba. We are perfectly aware that Geology is a complex and astounding science. New data, innovative new technologies and creative concepts never formulated can quickly destroy these predictions, for better or worse. O petróleo ainda será a principal fonte de energia da humanidade por, no mínimo, 50 anos. O Brasil já é e certamente será um provedor ainda mais importante desta matéria prima durante décadas. Há muitas bacias com grande potencial ainda intactas e muitas áreas ainda não exploradas em outras que já possuem reservas e produção. O objetivo deste trabalho é fazer previsões sobre o potencial petrolífero remanescente das bacias sedimentares do Brasil. As previsões são feitas com base no enorme acervo de dados acumulado nos 83 anos de história da exploração petrolífera brasileira, com base nos conceitos mais atualizados da ciência da geologia do petróleo, e, principalmente, com base em minha experiência de 45 anos de atividade no ramo. Nossa previsão final, para o potencial remanescente de petróleo (potencial de recursos prospectivos, identificados ou não, mas ainda não descobertos) de todas as bacias brasileiras fica na faixa de 50-100 bi