5 ms·
Hopefully this will be good news for Brazil in the long run - but I worry that becoming a major oil exporter will be much worse for the Brazilian people. The i
by mlinsey 19y ago
Hopefully this will be good news for Brazil in the long run - but I worry that becoming a major oil exporter will be much worse for the Brazilian people. The ideal workforce to make a country rich from technology and innovation is a well-educated, relatively free one that can experiment and be creative. The ideal workforce to make a country rich from a natural resource is a poorly educated one that will fall in line with the regime that controls the resource. Monopolies and tyrannies are bad for hacking but great for pumping oil.
- arvid 19y agoDon't get your hopes up too much. Petrobras is a state run monopoly and has had a number of recent corruption scandals. Even though the price of oil has risen dramatically and Brazil continues to find more reserves, production has actually dropped the last few years. This is due to the fact that a platform sank a few years ago and 5 year's ago the government decided that all new platforms should be Brazilian-built. Of course they are also behind schedule with cost over-runs. These new fields are very deep and will require new technology and significant investments. Given the government's tendency to maintain political and economic control of natural resources, it is unlikely that much external investment or technology will participate in the exploration. The benefits from these new fields is many years away probably much later than 2012.