Impacto econômico da extração de petróleo e gás na margem equatorial no Brasil

Abstract

Oil and gas exploration in the Brazilian Equatorial Margin has been considered one of the main alternatives for maintaining national production levels, given the maturation of the country's main producing fields. However, exploration in this region involves environmental, technical, and regulatory challenges. Given the importance of the topic for the country, this paper aims to analyze the economic impacts of oil exploration in the Equatorial Margin using the InputOutput Matrix (IOM), measuring its effects on key economic variables. To this end, two types of scenarios were simulated. The first, a short-term scenario, used the Investment Absorption Matrix (IAM) to assess the projected investments of Petrobras in the region until 2029. The second considers the impact of oil production in the Equatorial Margin over 10, 15, and 20 years, using different estimates of the region's production potential. For this latter scenario, the results indicate that oil exploration in the Equatorial Margin can generate significant economic effects across all projected variations. This information contributes to the debate on the exploration of this new oil frontier, highlighting the positive effects of producing a high volume of oil. However, the study also emphasizes that, due to methodological limitations, the results should be interpreted with caution.