The Economist on oil in Brazil, Canada, and the US

The perils of Petrobras: BRAZIL’S discovery of oodles of offshore oil in 2007 felt like a transformative moment. For Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, it raised the prospect of pumping 5m barrels a day by 2020, up from around 2m—meaning a windfall for the government and juicy returns for minority investors. Under Graça Foster (pictured), Petrobras’s boss since February, the find may yet prove a boon to both. But they and she face a white-knuckle ride first...
The sands of grime: THE oil town of Fort McMurray gets a bad press. GQ magazine portrayed it as a hellhole of testosterone and tattoos, where drunken oilworkers shower strippers with cash and get into fights because there’s nothing else to do. Esquire called it “the little Canadian town that might just destroy the world”...

America’s oil bonanza: THE shale-gas revolution in America has been as sudden and startling as a supertanker performing a handbrake turn. A country that once fretted about its dependence on Middle Eastern fossil fuels is now on the verge of self-sufficiency in natural gas. And the news keeps getting better. This week the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that the United States would become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020, outstripping Saudi Arabia and Russia...