Brazil Blinks
The timing could not have been better for Brazil. And then the government intervened.
The timing could not have been better for Brazil. And then the government intervened.
March 2026 will be recorded as the month when the global oil system cracked in a way it had not since the 1970s. The Strait of Hormuz, choked off by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard after Operation Epic Fury, removed 20% of global crude supply from the market in the span of a few weeks. Brent crossed $100/bbl on March 8 for the first time in four years. Physical crude sprinted past $115/bbl and kept moving. With 230 loaded tankers stranded inside the Persian Gulf and Asian refiners scrambling for non-Gulf alternatives, the world turned to the Atlantic Basin. It turned, specifically, to Brazil.
Brazil’s pre-salt production hit 4.1 million barrels per day in February 2026, a record, up 16.4% year-on-year. Petrobras, sitting on lifting costs of around $6/bbl at its Buzios and Atapu clusters, was positioned to export into the highest-margin environment in recent memory. Chinese buyers doubled their Brazilian int…
