By Brazil Stock Guide – Brazil’s oil regulator has unanimously rejected an appeal by Equinor ASA to split the Raia discovery in the pre-salt Campos Basin into two separate fields, keeping the project classified as a single oil and gas field. The decision was taken at a board meeting on Monday (26), according to information first reported by Broadcast, a real-time financial news service.
By denying the request, the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels, known as ANP, required the Norwegian state-controlled producer to resubmit a unified development plan for Raia. The revised plan, aligned with the regulator’s ruling, was approved at the same meeting.
Maintaining Raia as a single field may increase the project’s tax burden. In Brazil, only large-producing fields are subject to the so-called Special Participation levy, which can reach as much as 40% of net quarterly revenue. Dividing the area could have reduced the incidence of that charge.
ANP Director Pietro Mendes, the rapporteur for the case, said the reservoirs are located within the same BM-C-33 exploration block in the Campos Basin pre-salt and are designed to share a single production unit. They therefore constitute “an integrated production development project,” he said.
Raia is operated by Equinor (EQNR NO, EQNR US), which holds a 35% stake. Repsol Sinopec Brasil, a unit linked to Spain’s Repsol SA (REP.MC), also owns 35%, while Petrobras (PETR4.SA, PBR US) holds the remaining 30%.
The consortium expects first oil in the first half of 2028. Recoverable reserves are estimated at about 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The development includes a floating production, storage and offloading vessel with capacity of 126,000 barrels a day, as well as a gas pipeline capable of transporting up to 16 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.
Leave a Reply