The National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP) of Brazil has recently approved a new resolution regarding the granting of oil and gas exploration and production contracts. This resolution replaces ANP Resolution 785/2019, which had served as a framework for the transfer and change of ownership in the upstream sector for over five years.
Elimination of the Evaluation Committee and Changes in Processes
The new resolution also eliminates the Proposal Evaluation Committee for Partnerships (CAPP), which was established under ANP Resolution 132/2022. This committee was responsible for reviewing requests that included contract grants, operator changes, replacements or exemptions from performance guarantees, and changes in consortiums or contractors resulting from mergers, splits, or company consolidations, and recommending them to the ANP board. Now, these tasks will be carried out directly by the technical departments of ANP involved in each contract granting process.
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Improvement and Facilitation of Contract Granting Processes
ANP has announced that these new laws include improvements identified during the implementation of the previous resolution, aimed at filling gaps, clarifying provisions, correcting inconsistencies, and strengthening legal certainty in contract granting processes. By removing an intermediate layer of review, decision-making will be faster and more predictable, while specialized and multidisciplinary analyses of each request will still be maintained.
These changes not only help expedite processes, but ANP has stated that the board will still be responsible for decision-making and having a unified view of contracts and relevant parties. These changes are seen as part of broader efforts to modernize and simplify ANP's regulatory governance.
The approval of contract grants in Brazil is considered a critical step for upstream transactions. In this country, operators regularly transfer their stakes in pre-salt fields, post-salt fields, and land consortiums and production-sharing contracts, and any change in operator or guarantee structure requires ANP's approval for the transaction to be completed.
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