MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Saturday, June 27th 2026 - 09:43 UTC
The ANP clarified that inclusion on the list does not mean the companies will submit bids
Nineteen oil companies, among them Spain's Repsol and Colombia's Ecopetrol, have been cleared to bid in the upcoming auction of licenses to partner with the Brazilian State in the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the pre-salt, the country's main crude reserve. The list was released on Friday by the National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), following its publication in the Official Gazette.
It is the fourth cycle of the Permanent Offer of Production Sharing, whose public session is scheduled for October 7, the same day the ANP will also hold a concessions cycle with other areas. Through production-sharing contracts, applied to the pre-salt, the awarded companies exploit the fields together with the Brazilian State, which keeps a share of the extracted oil. The pre-salt, located beneath a thick layer of salt in ultra-deep waters of the Atlantic off the Brazilian coast, holds the largest reserves discovered in the country in recent decades and is considered the driver of national production growth.
