Shell Joins Exxon With $1 Billion Brazil Exploration Setback
- Shell has drilled three unsuccessful oil exploration wells
- Brazil hasn’t made a single knockout oil discovery in a decade
The Petrobras MV30 Carioca floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel anchored in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, on Thursday, July 1, 2021.
Photographer: Dado Galdieri/BloombergExpensive offshore exploration setbacks for international oil majors including Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. are throwing cold water on their plans to turn Brazil into a profit center.
In the past three years, Shell has drilled three exploration wells without finding any commercial volumes, said Marcelo de Assis, the head of Latin American upstream research at consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd. Shell and its partners paid just over $1 billion for the rights to explore the three blocks. The three wells Exxon Mobil has drilled in Brazil’s waters since late 2020 are also non-commercial, which cost $1.6 billion to access.