Galp has widened its partnership with Equinor in Brazil’s Santos Basin. At the fourth cycle of the Permanent Offer under production sharing, held by the Brazilian oil regulator ANP in Rio de Janeiro on 7 October, a consortium of Equinor Brasil (operator, 70 percent) and Galp Energia Brasil (30 percent) won the Rodocrosita block, which Galp describes as adjacent to the Bacalhau development in block BM-S-8, where the two companies are already partners. The consortium offered the federal government (the Union, in Brazilian contract terms) 15.52 percent of the profit oil, against a minimum of 2.61 percent set in ANP’s tender notice. According to ANP, that is a premium of 494.64 percent, the highest of the round.

ANP awarded seven of the 13 blocks on offer, all in the pre-salt polygon: Magnetita, Hematita and Azurita in the Campos Basin, and Jade, Cruzeiro do Sul, Rubi and Rodocrosita in the Santos Basin. The signature bonuses, which are fixed in advance, total R$530.5 million (about €94.8 million at the European Central Bank reference rate of R$5.5953 per euro on 7 October), and the minimum investment for the exploration phase R$778.4 million, the regulator said. Six companies bid and all six won: Prio Forte took Magnetita and Hematita, Petrobras took Azurita and Cruzeiro do Sul, CNOOC (70 percent) and Sinopec (30 percent) took Jade, and Equinor won Rubi on its own with an offer of 25.02 percent. The average premium was 108.38 percent. ANP said this was the production-sharing cycle with the most blocks awarded since the Permanent Offer began, beating the five of the third cycle in 2025. Executive Digest, citing the Lusa news agency, reported that there was no competition: each of the seven blocks drew a single bid.

What the consortium committed to

Under production sharing the bonus is fixed by the tender notice, and the block goes to whoever offers the Union the largest share of the profit oil: the production left once the contractor has recovered its costs. The Union’s share is sold by the state company Pré-Sal Petróleo (PPSA), ANP explains. For Rodocrosita, the tender notice sets a signature bonus of R$20,845,968.95, a minimum exploration programme of 266 work units, a minimum investment of R$122.8 million and a seven-year exploration phase. Galp put the gross bonus at R$20.8 million (about US$4.1 million), which is about €3.7 million at the ECB rate; Galp’s 30 percent share comes to about R$6.3 million (NorthSouth HQ calculation). At 3,088.9 square kilometres, Rodocrosita is the largest of the seven blocks awarded, according to ANP’s results spreadsheet. The tender notice does not list it among blocks that may need to be unitised with a neighbouring area.

Next door to Bacalhau

Bacalhau spans the BM-S-8 and Norte de Carcará licences, in which Equinor is operator with 40 percent, ExxonMobil holds 40 percent and Galp 20 percent, with PPSA as manager of the production-sharing contract. Its floating production, storage and offloading unit (FPSO), 370 metres long and 64 metres wide with capacity for 220,000 barrels a day, started production in October 2025, 185 km off Ilhabela in São Paulo state and in more than 2,000 metres of water, according to Galp and Equinor. Equinor calls Bacalhau its largest offshore field outside Norway, with more than 1 billion barrels of estimated recoverable reserves in its first phase, which has 19 wells and an investment of about US$8 billion announced in 2021. Galp said the field would add about 40,000 barrels a day to its output at plateau, more than 30 percent on top of its production at the time. In the second quarter of 2026 Galp’s production averaged 127,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, 12 percent more than a year earlier, “driven by the ongoing ramp-up of the Bacalhau FPSO”, the company reported.

Both companies present Rodocrosita in terms of that neighbour. Galp said the consortium had “secured future optionality to explore potential synergies with the Bacalhau project” and would benefit from the technical and geological knowledge gained in the area. Equinor said the proximity “creates potential synergies between the two areas in the future” and that the block’s size allows other opportunities to be studied, whereas Rubi could be developed on its own. Letícia Andrade, Equinor’s vice-president for asset management, told the Brazilian energy news agency eixos that the company looks for opportunities close to assets already in its portfolio, as it did at the 2025 auction with the Itaimbezinho block near its Raia project in the Campos Basin, and is also targeting “clusters or areas close to existing infrastructure”. “The acquisition of the Rodocrosita block reflects Galp’s disciplined approach to expanding its exploration portfolio,” said Nuno Bastos, Galp’s executive vice-president for upstream. Nina Koch, president of Equinor in Brazil, said the awards reflected a strategy of “seeking opportunities that can create synergies with the assets we already have” while building new options for growth. (The Portuguese-language quotes from Equinor, Galp and eixos are NorthSouth HQ translations.)

The Galp company in the new block is not the one that holds Bacalhau. ANP’s results and Equinor’s announcement name the 30 percent partner as Galp Energia Brasil, and ANP’s list of 19 companies cleared to bid in the round includes Galp Energia Brasil S.A. and Petrogal Brasil S.A. as separate bidders. Galp holds its 20 percent of Bacalhau, as well as its stakes in Tupi and Iracema, through Petrogal Brasil, a joint venture with China’s Sinopec in which Galp has 70 percent and Sinopec 30 percent. Galp’s announcement refers only to “Galp with a 30% interest” and does not say how Galp Energia Brasil is owned; NorthSouth HQ could not confirm whether Sinopec has a share in it.

A partnership that began with Statoil

The partnership predates Equinor’s current name. BM-S-8 was awarded in 2000, and Galp says it is the only partner that signed the original concession contract. Petrobras discovered Carcará, the accumulation now developed as Bacalhau, in 2012, according to Equinor. On 29 July 2016 Statoil, as Equinor was then called, agreed to buy Petrobras’s 66 percent operated interest in BM-S-8 for US$2.5 billion, and it completed the purchase on 22 November 2016. On 27 October 2017, at ANP’s second production-sharing round, Galp, Statoil and ExxonMobil won Norte de Carcará (Carcará North), the adjacent area into which the discovery extends, offering 67.12 percent profit oil and a signature bonus of R$3.0 billion (about US$930 million, according to Galp); the same day Galp also agreed to buy a further 3 percent of BM-S-8 from Statoil. In July 2019 eixos reported that ANP had approved the last of the reshuffles: the exit of Barra Energia from BM-S-8, with its stake passing to Equinor and then partly on to Galp and ExxonMobil. That aligned the stakes across both licences at 40 percent each for Equinor and ExxonMobil and 20 percent for Galp. The partners took the final investment decision on the first phase in 2021.

What happens next

Under ANP’s timetable, the winners must file their qualification documents by 14 October; the result is due to be ratified by 18 November, the signature bonuses paid by 30 December and the production-sharing contracts signed by 26 February 2027. Galp said the next steps are formalising the contract and carrying out the work set for the exploration phase under ANP’s programme. Equinor is still discussing the exploration activities with partners; “we expect there will be wells, yes”, Andrade told eixos.

For Galp, the award adds to an exposure that is already concentrated. The company says Brazil currently accounts for all of its oil and gas production, and the project driving its production growth there, Bacalhau, is operated by Equinor, whose largest shareholder is the Norwegian state, with 67 percent. Rodocrosita adds a new exploration block to that relationship, and follows Galp’s entry in 2025 into three offshore blocks in Brazil’s Pelotas Basin. Both Rodocrosita stakes are held through the groups’ Brazilian companies. In Norway itself, Galp Energia registered a branch on the company register in April 2026, whose stated activity reads “employee who works in Norway”, as NorthSouth HQ reported. Profiles of Galp and Equinor are in the NorthSouth HQ directory, and Portuguese companies active in the Nordic countries are listed in the directory of Portuguese companies in the Nordics.