RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell will participate in Brazil’s deepwater oilfield auction on Friday and is confident it can pump oil from the fields on offer for less than $40 a barrel, a top Shell executive said. Brazil will hold its first auction in four years for its pre-salt oilfields on Friday. The eight deepwater blocks on offer hold billions of barrels in reserves, and for the first time, Brazil will allow foreign oil firms to operate the fields in the region. Shell believes it could pump oil from the pre-salt fields below the company’s target breakeven cost of $40 per barrel, Wael Sawan, Executive Vice President for Shell’s deepwater division, told Reuters. The high quality of the reserves and the prolific output volume that the pre-salt wells can produce make them an attractive proposition, he said. FULL ARTICLE
