(Washington Post) When fields said to hold billions of barrels of oil were discovered off the coast here, exuberant government officials said the deep-sea prize would turn Brazil into a major energy player.
More than six years later, the outlook for Brazil’s oil industry, much like the Brazilian economy itself, is more sobering. Oil production is stagnant, the state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, is hobbled by debt, and foreign oil companies are wary of investing here.
“It’s funny, a few years ago, everybody loved Brazil,” said Roger Tissot, a longtime consultant on Latin American energy. “And now it seems the love is gone.”
Brazil once saw itself as an up-and-coming oil power that would help meet the world’s demand, but it now faces a hard reality and might have to scale back its expectations, former energy officials, oil executives and advisers say.
The country’s deep-sea bonanza has suddenly become less alluring to big, rich oil companies. Other promising energy sources have emerged around the world, including fields in Africa, tar sands in Canada and shale gas deposits unlocked by hydraulic fracturing technology, also called fracking, in the United States.
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