The lower house of the Brazilian Congress approved a bill that opens to foreign investors the country’s oil and gas fields offshore and allows other companies to be operators of such projects, reports Bloomberg.
Under the new rules, operators of deepwater fields can now be not only the state company Petrobras, but also other companies.
Petrobras, meanwhile, will have the first right to choose its fields of interest.
Petrobras, with its highest indebtedness among the world’s oil companies, does not have sufficient finance for the acquisition of new deposits. The fall in oil prices negatively affected the state company on the background of the political and economic crisis in the country. The corporation’s image was also seriously spoiled by the scandal after revealing multibillion-dollar corruption schemes in Petrobras.