Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

This resolution establishes specific criteria on the licensing of activities
related to drilling and production of oil and natural gas. It also determines
that all activities must be licensed by Ibama (the federal agency to deal with
environmental matters) or by the correspondent state environmental agency,
depending upon the scope of each one.
Brazilian authority requirements regarding environmental issues tend
to be tighter and tighter since this matter is a major concern nowadays.
4. Requirements for Prospecting and Exploring Offshore Brazil
Several requirements must be accomplished by prospecting or
exploring companies to be authorised to operate in Brazilian waters. ANP, as
already mentioned, is the proper authority to give such operation
authorisation.
In the case of data acquisition, which is dealt by Ordinance number
188 of 1998, the authorisation is intuito personae, that is, for the specific
company that requested it. The authorisation cannot be negotiated with any
other company, unless ANP previously and explicitly agrees to that.
Otherwise, more than one company may be authorised to prospect at the
same area.
Concessionaires do not need to require authorisation for data
acquisition at its own concession, but they must register all the operations. A
series of information shall be presented to ANP until 20 days before the
beginning of the work.
The prospecting company must present information on the company
itself, such as legal constituent documents, proofs of technical and operational
capability, previous experience etc. Additionally, it has to apply information
on the proposed acquisitions like what will be prospected, where it will occur,
a detailed schedule of the works, a summary of geologic information of the
area, and the reasons for the data acquisition is interesting for exploration and
production of petroleum and natural gas, besides other usual or relevant
information. If any of this information is altered or updated, the company
must present the new one in a 30-day period to ANP.
INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 831