Oil &Gas Brazil's goal for the next ten years is to triple annual production of oil and gas, sector should receive 67% of the planned investment of R$ 1 trillion (625 billion U.S. dollars) for the entire country's energy sector. According the chairman of the Energy Research Company of Brazil (in Portuguese acronym EPE), Maurício Tolmasquim, who presented yesterday (June 6), in Rio de Janeiro, the Ten Year Plan for Expansion of Energy (PDE 2020), Brazilian production of oil will rise from current 2.1 million bpd to 6.1 million in 2020 as a result of the operation of the pre-salt. "The consumption will increase, but most of it goes to the foreign market", said Tolmasquim, warning that the volume considers the production of Petrobras (SAO:PETR3 / PETR4, NYSE:PBR / PBR.A, Latibex: XPBR / XPBRA, BCBA: APBR / APBRA) added to the entire private sector. According to PDE, 50% of production is destined for exports. Regarding natural gas, the estimate of EPE is a jump from the current supply of 58 million m3/day in 2011 to 142 million m3/day in 2020. Ethanol The PDE, which is already open to the public consultation on the website of the Ministry of Mines and Energy on the Internet, also projects an increase in demand for ethanol in the Brazilian market as a result of the expansion of flex-fuel (cars that run both with ethanol or gasoline mixed or separately), that now reach 50% of the national fleet, but that should reach 78% of cars in circulation in 2020. In addition, EPE projects that the price of ethanol will be competitive with the gasoline. The supply of ethanol concentrates almost all of the investments planned for the area of biofuels, which totaled R$ 97 billion (60.6 billion U.S. dollars). "When you increase the flex [bi-fuel car], it also increases the consumption of ethanol. Historically, 70% of people who have flexible fuel vehicles consume ethanol instead of gasoline", said Tolmasquim. The projection is that the supply of ethanol reflect the increase in demand, avoiding the possibility of missing the biofuel in terms of price, weather conditions and seasonality of harvests of sugar cane. Eletric Energy Regarding electricity, Tolmasquim also presented an optimistic scenario. According to PDE, Brazil has already contracted 70% of the electricity needed to meet increased demand projected by 2020, 4.7% per year on average (for an economic growth estimated at 5% per year). The remaining 30%, which still need to be hired, will have priority as a renewable source, with a smaller share of hydroelectric power plants, which currently represent 75% of installed capacity, but should drop to 67% by 2020. "With regard to electricity generation, hydropower remains the priority, closely followed by wind energy and biomass. We can not discard the thermal gas as with the pre-salt, there was a major discovery of natural gas and may also have an important role in this array", explained the president of EPE. Nuclear Energy About nuclear energy, Mauricio Tolmasquim showed caution and noted that the PDE has provided for the construction of the third plant in Angra dos Reis, only nuclear plant designed for this decade. "After that, we can expect a discussion about the role of nuclear energy in the Brazilian matrix. We have a great debate after [the leak of radiation on plants] Fukushima, Japan. There was the deactivation of the power plants in Germany. But we have to consider that Brazil has great potential, dominates the enrichment of uranium and has the sixth uranium reserves in the world. Therefore, we should consider that we give up this technology, but we discuss it by looking at the pros and cons to see at what pace we should explore it."

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