Unlocking Deepwater Prospectivity in the Southern Pelotas Basin Offshore Brazil

Despite industry exploration focus and success on Cretaceous clastic slope and basin floor plays on the Atlantic passive margin for the last 20 years, the southernmost Atlantic margin remained unexplored until Shell and Total Energies respectively announced, in 2022, the giant Graff and Venus discoveries in the Orange Basin offshore Namibia. On the conjugate side, in southernmost Brazil, lies the unexplored Pelotas Basin, one of the world’s great Cretaceous and Tertiary Deltas. Despite success in the conjugate Orange Basin, there remain questions on the geological elements of the petroleum system. The good news is that the underlying negative ideas surrounding exploration play factors that have led to the lack of exploration activity in Pelotas have finally been superseded. Recent 3D seismic data is revealing that source presence, hydrocarbon phase, reservoir presence, trap configuration and size are all extremely positively arranged in Brazil’s Pelotas Basin.