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00:00Unlike other state-owned oil giants like Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco or Norway's Equinor,
00:09Brazil's Petrobras was founded without meaningful oil reserves. Bit strange, isn't it?
00:15But for decades, Brazilians believed that their country had oil. And they persisted in that
00:20belief despite words and data saying otherwise. And their faith was rewarded. Turns out there
00:27was oil in Brazil. It just wasn't on land. In this video, how Brazil learned to drill its deep water
00:35oil. While there are records of people drilling for oil in Brazil since the late 1800s,
00:41these efforts were small and scattershot. Fossil fuel exploration in Brazil more focused on finding
00:48coal for the national steel effort. Didn't find any, by the way. This is in contrast to developments
00:54in the rest of South America where international oil companies like Standard Oil and Royal Dutch
00:59Shell struck major fields in Venezuela and Colombia. For decades, the Brazilian economy instead heavily
01:07depended on the production and export of coffee. In the 1920s, Brazil dominated the world coffee market
01:14with 75% share. This centralized power with the coffee oligarchs primarily living in the state of
01:21Sao Paulo. And as coffee prices doubled leading up to 1925, life was good. At least for them.
01:29But then, in the second half of the 1920s, production far exceeded demand. And after the Wall Street
01:35crash of 1929, coffee prices were something like 10% of what they were in earlier days.
01:43The economic crisis that followed eroded the legitimacy of Brazil's rural coffee oligarchs.
01:48In 1930, a coalition of military generals and urban elites launched a revolution that brought Brazilian
01:55President Getulio Vargas to power. Vargas' rule shifted Brazil's economy towards industrialization,
02:03and oil became a part of this push. In 1934, he announced the new quote-unquote mining code
02:10that nationalized all the oil beneath the ground.
02:13To fend off foreign producers, the government set up the National Department of Mineral Production,
02:20or DNPM, to find oil in the country. The DNPM hired foreign oil experts to help,
02:27and they reported nothing of significance. But people were unfazed. Brazil was so massive,
02:33how can it not have oil?
02:35Government efforts soon received public criticism from an unexpected source.
02:41Monteiro Lobato was one of Brazil's most famous writers. About half of his work consisted of
02:47children's fantasy books, but he also dabbled in literary criticism and journalism.
02:52I might imagine that he was like the Neil Stevenson of his day, but I reckon a bit more varied.
02:59Lobato was an economic nationalist who believed that Brazil's oil should belong to Brazilians.
03:05In the late 1920s, he traveled to the United States and saw how the country's people
03:10leveraged its massive natural resources for their own benefit, particularly their oil.
03:16Believing that Brazil had to have oil somewhere within its massive borders
03:21and not wanting to leave it to foreign oil companies, he got involved in oil exploration.
03:27His time and growing frustration with these ventures eventually colored his writing.
03:32In 1936, Lobato wrote a series of fictional but inspired by reality books criticizing the DNPM
03:40for being in cahoots with hidden interests by suppressing national oil exploration.
03:47And by hidden interests, he meant the International Oil Company's or the Octopus Standard Oil.
03:54He summed it up with a catchy slogan.
03:56The DNPM was not founded to find oil, but to prevent anybody finding it.
04:03Lobato organized a national campaign to pressure the government.
04:07And in response, the government set up the National Petroleum Council or CNP, endowed with
04:13greater control over oil exploration.
04:15It was led by General Horta Barbosa, a staunch economic nationalist.
04:20They drilled in the state of Bahia, and in 1939, they found Brazil's first commercial-grade oil well,
04:28named Candias I, in the district of Lobato.
04:32By the way, the district's naming was a funny coincidence.
04:36It's been called that since the 1600s.
04:39World War II sparked a massive industrialization drive in Brazil, and this presented an issue.
04:45Yes, the Bahia oil fields were commercial, but by the end of the war, they produced at most
04:52200 barrels a day.
04:54The country had to import oil to fulfill its booming demand, mostly from Venezuela.
05:00Those first discoveries in Bahia sparked an initial wave of exploration.
05:05But the CNP banned any private companies from prospecting in the area, which again caused frustration to build up.
05:12President Vargas ruled Brazil with a tight grip.
05:16During World War II, however, he fought on the side of the Allies, adopting democratic language in doing so.
05:24People soon identified the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom abroad, but running a dictatorship at home.
05:31Vargas tried to assuage them with a few liberalizing moves.
05:35But in October 1945, a coterie of high military officials, believing Vargas to be trying to seize permanent power, ousted him in a bloodless military coup.
05:47His removal opened the door to conservative pragmatists who advocated that Brazil allow foreigners like Standard Oil or Anglo-Mexican Petroleum to invest in the oil business.
05:58It would accelerate technology development and flag the country's friendliness to foreign investors.
06:05The Nationalists rejected this, calling the conservatives sellouts and campaigning vigorously with the now-famous slogan,
06:13The Oil is Ours.
06:15This sparked an ideological war over the quote-unquote oil problem.
06:20Even after his ouster, Vargas continued to exercise influence in Brazil.
06:25In 1950, he brilliantly executed a populist campaign that positioned him as the father of the poor, which returned him to the presidency.
06:36To mollify both factions, Vargas decided to take a middle way.
06:40In October 1953, he signed into law an act to create a state-owned company called Petrobras and gave it a federal monopoly over all oil development activities.
06:51Petrobras received $2 million in startup capital and inherited assets of $165 million, including the Bahia Wells,
07:01which produced about 2,400 to 2,700 barrels of oil per day.
07:07But with an estimated total recoverable reserves of just 15 million barrels, those fields were a pittance.
07:14Petrobras needed more.
07:15In 1954, an American oil geologist named Walter K. Link was given an offer he could not refuse.
07:24Blunt but well-respected, Link prospected for oil in Indonesia, Venezuela, and New Guinea for 20-plus years.
07:33In 1954, he left semi-retirement as chief geologist for Standard Oil of New Jersey to build Petrobras' exploration program.
07:41The Brazilians gave him an annual salary of $100,000, or about $1.2 million today, tax-free.
07:50This must be like the Saudis paying Phil Mickelson $200 million to golf in their league.
07:56Link put together 15 teams of 200-plus geologists to study rock formations, collect samples, survey subsurface structures, and drill exploratory wells.
08:06These were originally staffed by foreigners, but would over time be replaced by native Brazilians.
08:14Strict admission tests were set up to choose such Brazilian applicants on merit.
08:19Graduate-level courses were established to train them, taught by experts from the United States or Europe.
08:27Meanwhile, Petrobras started building up the infrastructure downstream of the oil.
08:32They took on the country's first oil refinery, Mataripe, in Bahia, and expanded its capacity.
08:38And they bought a fleet of 22 oil tankers to transport oil abroad.
08:43In 1958, with Brazil importing 150,000 to 180,000 net barrels a day at a cost of $270 million a year in foreign exchange,
08:54Petrobras President-Colonel January Nunez publicly set a goal of doubling the amount of oil pumped from the current $53,000 to $110,000 in 1961.
09:06At the same time, Petrobras announced it would invest $900 million into more drilling and infrastructure.
09:13This was funded with debt and generous government gifts, including tariff exemptions, tax relief on equipment,
09:21and a scheme that let the company keep 80% of precious foreign exchange it made from selling Brazilian oil.
09:29Over six years, Link's teams drilled the various sedimentary basins within Brazil's borders
09:35from the Amazon River to the San Francisco estuary.
09:40You might say he was taking a deep breath of the wild.
09:45They spent over $200 million and drilled 200-plus wells.
09:49They found over 100 oil-producing wells but no major field.
09:53And all the commercially viable wells were still in the Bahia state.
09:57At the end of his six-year contract, a disheartened Link delivered a report of his team's work to Petrobras' board of directors.
10:07Initially confidential, the report quickly leaked to the public.
10:11In it, Link and a team of 14 geologists, six of whom were Brazilian, rated Brazil's 12 onshore sedimentary basins.
10:20None of the basins were given an A rating.
10:22The best rating was a B-plus awarded to the Reconcavo Basin in Bahia.
10:29Link noted that 95% of Brazil's onshore sedimentary basins were covered with lava beds thousands of feet thick.
10:37Oil has never been found in such structures, perhaps because the heat burns off any organic material or does not properly trap oil.
10:46And even if these remote basins had oil, the logistics of pumping in the Amazon seemed utterly insurmountable.
10:56He advised the Brazilians to stop pouring money down the drain, saying,
11:00quote,
11:00There is no geological justification for spending another $20 million in these basins in 1961.
11:07The hope that oil might be accidentally discovered is very small and cannot be scientifically or technically justified.
11:14When Link first took the job, the world thought Brazil's lands were awash in oil.
11:21So the public did not take the report well.
11:24Eurasi Magalhas, Petrobras' first president and the person who hired Link said,
11:29Why wouldn't God have conceded this present to us?
11:33Communist Brazilians called Link a tool of private capital.
11:37The Nationalist claimed that he was simultaneously holding a second job at Standard Oil,
11:42steering Petrobras to the quote-unquote wrong places.
11:46Link was obviously insulted but said,
11:49I didn't quit.
11:50I wasn't fired.
11:52My contract was finished and it was finished at the date I specified.
11:56I'm not mad at the Brazilians and I don't think they're mad at me.
12:00The Brazilians are nice people.
12:02I like them very much.
12:04We enjoyed our stay.
12:05We even adopted two Brazilian children, 10 and 12 years old.
12:11Link's work wasn't all for naught.
12:13By 1961, Petrobras produced an average of 85,000 barrels of oil per day.
12:19For one day, they pushed to 100,000,
12:21a titanic improvement over the 2,400 or so daily barrels the whales produced in 1954.
12:30However, the country had refining capacity of 290,000 barrels a day,
12:36and Brazilians were consuming 300,000 barrels a day at a cost of $250 to $300 million a year.
12:44Link recommended that Petrobras focus on refining activities
12:48and prospect for oil abroad, as well as to go, quote, to the sea, end quote.
12:56Petrobras was under a great deal of pressure politically.
13:00Opposing politicians constantly decried the company's protected status.
13:0540% of its revenues and profits came from earmarks and protections.
13:09No matter Walter Link's earnestness in delivering the results,
13:13the report came at a bad time.
13:15In March 1961, Petrobras hired a pair of Brazilian scientists.
13:21Geologist Pedro de Mora, who had worked on that first well back on the Candias,
13:25and geophysicist Decio Severo Odon to give a second opinion on the Link report.
13:32The two offered a more optimistic view of Brazil's oil potential,
13:36noting that Link's teams did not drill enough wells to make such a sweeping judgment.
13:41They advocated to continue investigating certain basins like the Amazon,
13:45Cerquipe, and offshore basins.
13:48So Petrobras kept on drilling those basins, including the Cerquipe.
13:52In mid-1961, one of those wells named Rosario del Catete showed signs of live oil,
13:59meaning oil, with some of its original components.
14:03It hinted that basin did indeed have oil.
14:05Petrobras commissioned a seismic survey that showed an upward fold in the rock layers
14:12capable of trapping oil.
14:15In August 1963, they drilled an exploratory well
14:18and discovered Brazil's largest onshore oil field,
14:22Karmopolis, with recoverable reserves of a billion barrels.
14:26Link's teams drilled there before,
14:29and had simply been unlucky in not finding this particular field.
14:33Mora and Odon's gutsy but correct call
14:36showed Brazilians that their people were ready to helm a national champion.
14:42Even so, Karmopolis was nowhere near big enough to make the country self-reliant in terms of oil.
14:4880% of Brazil's demand still had to be met with imports from the foreign oil giants,
14:54draining foreign exchange and engendering nationalist sentiment.
14:58So, in the early 1960s, the nationalists pushed to make Petrobras the sole company in the energy
15:05sector. Petrobras was given an oil import monopoly. Key private refineries were expropriated and merged
15:12into Petrobras. And Petrobras was allowed to distribute oil products, setting up retail outlets.
15:18Then, in April 1964, another coup overthrew the leftist president Goulart and installed a military
15:26dictatorship. This meant big changes for Petrobras.
15:30The coup curbed the influence of the nationalists. The new government maintained their rhetoric,
15:36but adopted a more pragmatic approach. The expropriated private refineries were returned,
15:42and the company started exploring foreign partnerships. New leadership also cracked down
15:48on what had been a growing trend of labor union activities, purging labor leaders and replacing
15:54them with less political technocrats. The company was then integrated as a critical pillar
16:00into a larger industrialization strategy.
16:03In 1968 or 1969, General Ernesto Geisel became the Petrobras chairman. Guaranteed political air
16:13cover to make bold moves, he set the company's mission to be to quote,
16:17guarantee the domestic supply of oil products, end quote. This, in practice, translated to three
16:24things. One, it meant allowing for oil exploration abroad. And they founded an international subsidiary
16:31named Bras Petro to do this. Two, it meant expanding downstream refining capacity and distribution of
16:39oil products to gain scale and reduce costs for consumers. Petrobras aggressively expanded its retail
16:46outlets, in some cases evicting foreign-owned outlets from good locations to do so. They got into
16:53petrochemicals and fertilizers as well. Third, and finally, it means that Petrobras had to start
17:00drilling offshore in the coastal plains and the continental shelf where people guessed that
17:05Brazil's oil would be. Geisel's thinking was that if Petrobras did not find oil offshore,
17:12the first two served as a hedge. His success in following through on this strategy and leading
17:18Brazil's largest company contributed to his elevation to the presidency in 1974.
17:24The Carmopolis Field decisively concluded that the Sergipe Basin produced oil and hinted at more
17:32offshore. Located on an onshore continental margin formed after the breakup of the supercontinent
17:38Gondawana, the basin had all the right geological conditions for generating, migrating, and trapping
17:45oil. At the same time, news had spread of oil discoveries in other basins at the world's
17:52continental margins. Petrobras' leadership thus deduced that Brazil's other continental margins,
17:58located underwater, might harbor similar conditions.
18:03Drilling offshore, however, would be technically challenging. Fortunately, the rest of the world
18:08was working on the same issues. New breakthroughs in offshore oil drilling were being pioneered in the
18:15coasts off Texas and Mexico, as well as a North Sea near Norway and Britain.
18:21Three fundamental new technologies were key to making offshore drilling economically viable.
18:28First, floating drilling platforms that allow companies to go and reach deep water regions
18:33further offshore. Sub-sea well completions that allow companies to install well equipment on the ocean
18:40floor, protecting them from damage due to rough surface conditions.
18:45And finally, new digital seismic computer tools for surveying, processing, and interpreting seismic data,
18:53allowing companies to have the confidence that the oil will be there when they start drilling.
18:59In 1966, Petrobras commissioned its first domestic floating offshore drilling platform,
19:05Petrobras One, or P-1, built at the cost of $30 million. 100% built in Brazil, but incorporating foreign technology.
19:15In 1968, thanks to a 37% increase in the exploration budget, the company opened their own digital surveying
19:22center equipped with a powerful IBM 360 mainframe computer to process data. An American computer, not a Brazilian one.
19:30These led to Brazil's first offshore oil well success. Petrobras had contracted a jack-up offshore drilling
19:39vessel called the Vinegarun from the Zabata Offshore Company to start drilling offshore.
19:45The first subsea well was drilled in 50-meter deep waters in a region called Espirito Santos.
19:52So, it was called ESS-01. ESS-01 came up dry but showed signs of salt.
19:58Salt can seal in oil, so the exploration teams got excited saying,
20:04basin with salt is basin with oil.
20:07However, the Vinegarun was not prepared to drill the salt. So Petrobras exploration head geologist
20:13Carlos W.M. Campos ordered the contracted jack-up rig over to Serquipe's offshore regions.
20:20There, in August 1968, it drilled hole SES-01, discovering what is now known as the Guarcema
20:28Field, Brazil's first commercial offshore oil field. Early on, it produced about 2,000 barrels
20:34of high-quality oil each day.
20:38Completed in July 1968, the floating platform Petrobras-01 was ordered to the field to start
20:45drilling. It took 25 days for the platform to travel from Rio de Janeiro, and historical
20:50accounts detail how engineers worried it might never get there. But it got there, and in 1969,
20:56they successfully drilled five holes. The first year of what turned out to be 26 years of service.
21:03I think now it's a hotel. Which is pretty cool.
21:07All of this came as the global oil market moved from a glut to a shortage and then a crisis.
21:14The first oil crisis in 1973 caused oil prices to skyrocket from $2 a barrel to $14. Since Brazil
21:22was then still importing 70-80% of its oil, its import bill spiked from $1 billion in 1972 to $4.9 billion
21:33in 1974. In Brazil, oil is not just a nice-to-have. It is essential to its whole economy. Brazil's
21:42limited waterways meant that people had to drive to get around. And the country's high poverty levels
21:47make its people extremely sensitive to inflation. So the oil crisis put unprecedented pressure on
21:54Petrobras to replace imports with domestic supply. The company borrowed heavily to expand its offshore oil
22:02exploration efforts with more marine data and compute.
22:07One of the coastal basins reviewed was the Campos Basin, southeast of Rio de Janeiro.
22:14It had been drilled very early, in 1959, but that well was completely dry. Moreover, it showed an
22:21unpromising geology. The well drilled 1,940 meters of sedimentary rocks. These rocks were thought to be
22:29from the continent, as in from rivers and lakes. And this was not considered as good as marine
22:35sedimentary rocks. Below that layer was about 625 meters of volcanic basalt. Basalt is hard and
22:43impermeable and not easy to drill through. Drillers at the time did not see any particular reason for
22:49the hassle. But that was 1959. Things have changed. In 1971, Petrobras returned to the Campos as part of
23:00its overall strategy of exploring the offshore coastal basins. The surveys identified some promising
23:06structures, but frustratingly, the first few wells came up dry.
23:10Then in 1973, Petrobras drilled well RJS-7 in the Campos. At 3,200 meters, the drill hit a thick section
23:20of limestone, an unfavorable rock. Despite this discouraging sign, the story goes that the Petrobras
23:26head of exploration, CWN Campos, ordered the team to keep on drilling based on his experience and instincts.
23:33At 3,401 meters, the rock suddenly changed and the well revealed a significant amount of oil.
23:42The actual RJS-7 well didn't turn out to be a commercial well due to a lack of flow,
23:47but it was a majorly heartening sign. Later that year, the drill ship Petrobras-2
23:53started drilling in waters 62 miles from the shore and 120 meters deep, unprecedented for the time.
24:00A first well, RGS-9, suffered mechanical issues at depths of 3,000 meters.
24:07A second, RGS-9A, discovered the field we now call Garupa, the first of many in the Campos basin.
24:15Along with the Santos and Espirito Santo basins, these three basins are called the three sisters
24:21of Brazil's oil industry.
24:24The oil discovery highlighted a new problem. Before 1968, Petrobras had never extracted
24:30oil from an offshore field before. In fact, you might credibly argue that they were then more
24:36of a refining and oil products company, importing oil and refining it into gasoline and fertilizers
24:42for Brazilian consumers. How can such a company turn itself into a highly technical deep water
24:49specialist?
24:50To pressure the company to gain this expertise and replace imported oil, President Geisel publicly
24:57demanded in 1975 that Petrobras sign risk service deals with the foreign oil giants where the
25:04foreigners are allotted plots to prospect for oil. The foreigners did not get a lot out of it
25:10eventually, complaining that they got the riskier and lower quality plots to prospect, but the threat
25:16of facing competition lingered over Petrobras.
25:19At the same time, Petrobras' hopes of securing oil abroad suffers a major setback. In 1975,
25:28Petrobras' international arm Bras Petro hits a magnificent, supergiant oil field called
25:33Majnun. The name literally means crazy, which amuses me.
25:39Brazil's initial 1972 contract entitled Petrobras to 20% of the oil it discovered at a discount.
25:47But then, the Iraqi government nationalizes the whole oil industry and changes the contract.
25:55And then comes the Iran-Iraq war. Iran occupies the Majnun area, making further development
26:01impossible. The door to foreign sources of cheap oil is firmly closed.
26:07So in the end, Petrobras had no choice but to develop their own offshore capacity. And as it so often does,
26:13it led to new innovations. Usually, it takes about 4-6 years to build a fixed oil platform and start
26:21extracting oil from an offshore oil field, like how it is done in the Gulf. But Brazil did not have
26:27that kind of time or capital. So Petrobras adopted a risky concept known as the Early Production System,
26:34or SPA, pioneered by an American oil startup called Hamilton Brothers for the Argyle field in the North Sea.
26:41In this, they bring a semi-submersible platform and then tie it to subsea wells. The methodology
26:48allowed Petrobras to start producing 10,000 barrels a day from a field called the Enchova field just two
26:55years after its discovery. And when a production tower at the aforementioned Grupa field collapsed in
27:02September 1980, Petrobras floated over a processing ship called the Pipi Morais to connect to the
27:09subsea wells and extract oil while a longer-lasting system can be found.
27:14As we move into the 1980s, things start to get more dire. The second oil crisis in 1978 hits Brazil
27:21particularly hard. Annual inflation rises to 72% each year. Worse yet, the country had in prior years
27:28borrowed billions of dollars to fund economic development that piled up over $50 billion of
27:34external debt. When the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates in the late 1970s to start fighting
27:41inflation, capital started to flow out of Brazil. The currency started to weaken, making oil imports
27:47more expensive. In 1980, just 17% of the country's oil demand can be satisfied with domestic supply.
27:56Desperate to wean off imports, Brazil starts developing hydropower and investigating alternative
28:02fuels made of sugarcane and melon shells. To blunt the effect on consumers, the country imposes price
28:09controls on oil and oil products. But someone has to pay for that. So Petrobras squirreled away
28:15differences in the external and internal prices of oil into a deficit oil account which would only grow
28:21throughout the 1980s. Amidst this desperate need for oil, two major developments finally helped Petrobras
28:29tap its bounty of offshore oil. One in discovery, the other in recovery. In the 1970s, Petrobras contracted
28:37with two members of the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology trying to find a better way to know where
28:43the oil is before starting to drill for them. These guys introduced some work pioneered by Exxon and
28:50other oil majors that helped them model Brazil's underwater basins at its continental margins.
28:56And those models pointed to a geological structure called turbidite systems.
29:01Turbidites are structures left behind by massive underwater avalanches along the continental shelf.
29:07Such avalanches can be triggered by storms or earthquakes or sediments from rivers.
29:13I mentioned these briefly in a prior video about underwater cables. Turbidity currents caused by
29:19whatever are common cutters of these poor cables. Anyway, these avalanches transport massive amounts
29:26of sediment that end up settling on the ocean floor in thick and wide sediment deposits that are good
29:33at sealing in and trapping hydrocarbons. Turbidites unlocked major discoveries in the Gulf. And now
29:41Brazil wanted to use this weird little trick to strike oil for themselves. And in the late 1970s,
29:47their maps pointed to a turbidite body far offshore, implying a massive oil field below it.
29:54The issue, however, was that the area was located 2,500 to 3,000 meters underground,
30:00in waters 400 to 1,000 meters deep. It seemed simply too difficult to reach.
30:07But then Petrobras caught wind of a new type of drill ship in the industry.
30:12Dynamic positioning systems used satellite and computer-controlled thrusters and propellers
30:17to allow ships and drilling rigs to maintain a fixed position relative to a point on the seafloor.
30:25They replaced anchors, which are not practical in such deep waters.
30:28Shell pioneered the idea in the 1960s with the Eureka drill ship and kept working on it throughout
30:35the 1970s to continually push the limits in water depth barriers. Then in October 1983,
30:42Shell's dynamically positioned drill ship, the Discoverer Seven Seas,
30:46made a major discovery in the Gulf at about 400 meters depth.
30:50And earlier that same year, it drilled a dry well that went 2,000 meters deep underwater.
30:58At the same time, the recession and oil glut of the 1980s
31:02made these technologically advanced dynamically positioned ships more available to Petrobras.
31:08In late 1984, they rented the French-owned Pelerin
31:12and drilled well RJS-219A at 850 meters of water, discovering the giant field Marlin.
31:21Recognizing the challenges of getting to that oil, Petrobras launched a special research program
31:26in 1986. The field was developed in careful phases and sub-phases, with learnings from each
31:33phase rolled into the next. First, a pre-pilot, where in March 1991,
31:38a converted semi-submersible floating production unit, or FPU, called the Petrobras-13, produced
31:45first oil from two drilled wells. Then a pilot a year later, where a different semi-submersible
31:51platform FPU called the P-20 produced from 10 wells in 1992. Then, five modules across two phases
32:00starting in 1994. Phase 1 had modules 1 and 2, which brought two semi-submersible FPUs and one ship-like
32:07FPU to the field. The reservoir's response was so good, they added one more FPU in this phase,
32:14P-33, and made P-20 stay from the pilot permanent. Phase 2 had modules 3, 4, 5, where they added two
32:22more ship-like FPUs and a semi-submersible FPU. By 2000, a total of eight FPUs had been installed
32:30at the field. By 2016, the field supported 12 FPUs pulling up oil from the depths.
32:37From there and going into the 1990s, Petrobras has gone deeper and deeper into the compost basin.
32:44And in the process, turned the Brazilian Ocean into the major oil province that the country's
32:49oil pioneers had long dreamt of.
32:52Before we conclude, I want to thank fan Eric A. from Brazil for writing in and suggesting this topic.
33:01Petrobras has gone on to discover a multitude of deep water oil fields. This includes some of the
33:08biggest discoveries in the Western Hemisphere in the past 30 years. These pre-salt fields are on hard
33:15mode. They are regularly found under some 2,000 meters of water and 3,000 to 4,000 meters of sediment.
33:22Unfathomably deep, yet now being produced.
33:26Today, virtually all of Petrobras' 11.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves
33:32are in these immensely challenging offshore pre-salt fields.
33:37In 2023, per IEA statistics, Brazil, once so dependent on oil from abroad,
33:43produced an oil surplus. Brazil is now the most prolific oil producing country in Latin America.
33:50And incredible turnaround based on technology, industrial policy,
33:55and faith in what God had granted to the country.
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