The first pre-salt round covers 11 areas in the prodigious Santos and Campos basins. However, Brazil also offers plenty of exploration targets for those who prefer to stay salt-free, and the PGS data library is a great resource for evaluating opportunities both with and without salt.

Brazil bidding rounds are arranged by Brazil’s licensing authority the Agencia Nacional do Petroleo, Gas Natural e Biocombustiveis (ANP), but guided and authorized by the National Energy Policy Council (CNPE).  

Bidding is a public event held in the presence of authorities, companies, and the press.  The bidders submit their offers, including a required signature bonus and work program commitment, at a public session by putting a sealed envelope into a transparent acrylic box. Like the box, the process is designed to be transparent.  The winning bid is announced immediately, engendering excitement along with significant revenue.  

In December 2021, ANP announced a new bidding and licensing structure for Brazil, creating two permanent offer cycles for presalt and other blocks.  These replace the previous three-part system of Production Sharing Rounds for presalt acreage; Concession Rounds for new deepwater exploration; and Open Acreage Rounds for returned areas or those with proven marginal accumulations. 

Permanent Offer Rounds – the Process

New cycles under both Concession and Sharing permanent offer systems are launched by the ANP with an announcement describing the blocks on offer and the minimum terms required. 

Qualified participating companies will be required to submit documents showing an interest within a sector and pay a participation fee.  Once the notice of interest is received by ANP, a Permanent Offer cycle begins which usually takes around 120 days (although this timeline is not guaranteed). Once the cycle has begun, additional companies can register, as long as their bids and payments are submitted not less than 30 days prior to the public session declaring the winners. The process ends with the public session, where the winning bids are pulled from the acrylic box.  

Contracts will typically be finalized between the winning bidder and ANP within three to six months, assuming the bidders have submitted the appropriate guarantees and paid the signature bonus.

Making the Most of the Opportunities

There are plenty of opportunities on offer, and whatever your priorities, the PGS data library is an excellent place to start evaluating them. PGS has been a driver of technological advances in subsurface imaging offshore Brazil for almost 30 years and introduced both 3D seismic and broadband technology to this part of the world. 

You can see the results in our data library, which holds over 250 000 sq. km of MC3D, all acquired by PGS, including ca. 37 000 sq. km GeoStreamer data.  In addition, we offer over 70 000 sq. km of reprocessed 3D data, including the Santos Vision broadband reprocessing, and the 144 000 sq. km MegaSurvey.