Brazil Revokes PetroReconcavo Field Over Half-Barrel Output

Half a barrel of oil. That was the entire lifetime output of the Juriti field in northeastern Brazil before the country’s petroleum regulator pulled the plug on Friday, revoking PetroReconcavo’s right to operate it. The decision by the board of the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels, known as the ANP, was unanimous.

The Juriti concession, located in the Recôncavo Basin in the state of Bahia, was acquired by Reconcavo E&P, a subsidiary of the publicly traded company, through an ANP bidding round. Only one well was ever drilled. According to ANP director Symone Araújo, who oversaw the case, the field’s sole month of activity yielded 0.5 barrels of crude and 0.026 cubic meters of natural gas — quantities so negligible they barely register as production.

Regulatory patience finally runs out

The timeline Araújo laid out on Friday revealed a pattern of regulatory patience exhausted. In 2024, the ANP formally notified the company to either resume output within 12 months or transfer the concession to another operator. Three days before the deadline expired in September 2025, PetroReconcavo requested a six-month extension, insisting it still had commercial interest. Then, on the last day of the original deadline, it informed the regulator that production had restarted. When the ANP checked its official bulletins in December, there was no record of any output. The company blamed an internal communication failure.

Juriti was a negligible asset within PetroReconcavo‘s broader portfolio. The company, which trades on the B3 under the ticker RECV3, is Brazil’s leading independent onshore producer, operating roughly 50 fields across Bahia and Rio Grande do Norte. It averaged 26,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2025 and generated R$3.3 billion ($570 million) in annual revenue. But the manner of the loss raises questions about concession management at a company already under regulatory scrutiny.

In June 2025, the ANP ordered the immediate shutdown of another PetroReconcavo facility, the Cassarongongo field in Bahia, after finding failures in fire-suppression systems and pressure-vessel integrity. Operations resumed within a week, but analysts warned the incident signaled risks tied to aging infrastructure. The company’s shares have fallen roughly 21 percent over the past year, and fourth-quarter production dropped five percent year on year. Its next earnings report is due March 25.

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