Brazil Stumbles Through a Vital Oil Auction

Brazil's auction on Monday of its offshore Libra oil field, a prized "pre-salt" crude reservoir -- 6,500 feet under water and trapped below a thick layer of salt -- was a predictably disappointing spectacle.

For a tender that opened the door for private companies to tap into an oil trove of at least 8.5 billion barrels of oil -- enough to cover more than a year's worth of U.S. crude oil consumption -- few seemed interested.