needed to extract oil from formations that lie
far below the ocean floor in deep water. And
here, nationalism may get in the way: Con-
gress is planning to restructure the petroleum
sector, giving greater control to the national
oil company, Petrobrás, and relegating for-
eign firms to a secondary role. Managing that
relationship sensibly will be of the essence.
pected to run in the vicinity of $60 a barrel.
So Brazil is effectively betting that competing
technologies for making liquid fuels every-
thing from biofuels to synthetic oil from tar
sands will stumble on considerations of
cost or environmental damage.
could prove Brazil's undoing. The economy
needs humungous amounts of capital to