Is this the end of Brazil´s oil boom?

Brazil's massive offshore oil boom, particularly in the deep-sea offshore pre-salt oil fields, continues to grow despite weaker oil prices and the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The strong demand from Asian refineries, particularly in China, for lighter, sweeter crude oils has caused the demand for Brazilian crude oil to skyrocket since the end of 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic, a second round of lockdown on Europe's largest economies, a rapidly slowing global economy and poor global economic outlook have done little to quench China's insatiable thirst for crude oil. Data presented by Reuters shows that China's crude oil imports rose nearly 11% year over year to an equivalent of 11 million barrels per day in the first 10 months of 2020. Brazil has become a major supplier of crude oil to the world's second largest economy. This can be attributed to the introduction of IMO 2020 in January, which significantly reduces the sulfur content of marine fuels and is a major driver of the growing Asian demand for Brazil's sweet crude oil. Global pressure to reduce emissions means that demand for lighter, sweeter, low-sulfur crude oils that are cheaper and easier to refine will continue to grow. The largest economy in Latin America is now China's third largest supplier of oil, while it was fifth in 2019. There are fears that recent news from Brazil's national oil company Petrobras could derail Brazil's offshore oil boom. The integrated energy company recently announced its strategic plan 2021-2025, in which it announced a drastic cut in spending by 27% year-on-year to $ 55 billion. This is due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on demand for crude oil and derivative products, which resulted in significantly weaker oil prices, according to Petrobras. While this has raised some concern about how this will affect Brazil's growing offshore oil boom, the impact is likely to be minimal. Petrobras stated that it intends to spend $ 46 billion, or nearly 84% of the planned CAPEX budget, on exploration and production, with a focus on its pre-brine assets. It is Brazil's vast deep-sea pre-salt oil fields that produce the medium-quality sweet crude oils that have become so popular in China and are gaining greater market share in other parts of Asia.