The international oil companies ExxonMobil and Shell Plc. face what a May 16 Bloomberg report describes as “expensive offshore exploration setbacks” to their plans to turn Brazil into a major oil & gas profit centre.
Cumulatively, the two companies have reportedly recently sunk a total of US$3.6 billion into exploration wells offshore Brazil, but have, in each instance, come up with “non-commercial” wells. In the instance of Shell, a Bloomberg report says that over the past three years the company has drilled three exploration wells without finding any commercial volumes, the acquisition of the rights to the three blocks where the drilling occurred costing the company US$1 billion. In the instance of ExxonMobil, the three wells which the company has drilled in Brazil’s waters since late 2020 are also non-commercial, Bloomberg says.