Brazil faces a paradox: it possesses vast natural gas reserves in the pre-salt, a vital fuel for Artificial Intelligence (AI), yet fails to monetize them due to regulatory and market hurdles, missing a global opportunity window.
While the United States rapidly installs infrastructure for the growing demand of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Brazil finds itself at a crossroads. Companies like Bloom Energy demonstrate American agility by powering new data centers with natural gas fuel cells in very short timeframes, bypassing the bureaucracy and dependencies of traditional utility companies.
The secret? A robust and affordably priced natural gas market, driven by the abundance of shale gas and regulations that foster competition.
This reality starkly contrasts with the Brazilian scenario, where, despite enormous energy potential, the nation cannot transform its resources into a competitive advantage. The inefficiency lies not in the absence of natural wealth, but in a “capture architecture” that prevents the flow and fair pricing of natural gas, a crucial resource for the new digital economy powered by AI and sustainable data centers.
The AI Race: A Battle for Energy
The Artificial Intelligence sector demands a colossal amount of firm, uninterrupted energy. By 2025, investments by giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta in data centers will have surpassed those in the global oil and gas industry, highlighting that the technological race is, first and foremost, an energy race. In the United States, the resource driving this expansion is not just advanced chips, but the extensive pipeline network that ensures supply.
Americans install as much as 13.6 GW of capacity in a single year. Brazil, on the other hand, has accumulated connection requests totaling double that amount by 2038, but without guarantees of service.
Although the country boasts an abundant renewable energy matrix, data centers require an “instantaneous firmness” that natural gas can provide at competitive costs, something intermittent sources like solar and wind cannot yet deliver without expensive storage. The Henry Hub in the United States exemplifies a benchmark market that enables this equation.
The Brazilian Natural Gas Paradox
Brazil holds vast gas reserves in the pre-salt, with constantly growing volumes. However, paradoxically, the price of this gas for the domestic market is often tied to the cost of imports.
The problem is not in extraction, but in what happens after the well. The New Gas Law of 2021 made progress by opening up the transportation sector, but the processing of pre-salt gas remains highly concentrated, with Petrobras controlling about 65% of the market. This concentration, classified as critical by ANP itself, prevents independent producers from supplying the market.
ANP data reveals the distortion: in June 2026, producers received around 2.86 dollars per MMBtu, while industrial consumers paid 20.14 dollars. The monopoly infrastructure captures approximately two-thirds of the final value, constituting a “capture architecture” rather than an efficient market.
Furthermore, Brazil reinjects 58% of the produced gas back into the wells – more than double the global average of 25% – due to a lack of outflow infrastructure, resulting in imports to meet domestic demand. Bloom Energy, for instance, could not make its operation viable in Brazil years ago because the cost of gas was prohibitive.
The potential of the Macaé Hub, with its processing capacity of 25 million cubic meters per day at the Cabiúnas Terminal, remains underutilized. The physical infrastructure exists, but the lack of competition prevents it from becoming a relevant market.
Additionally, the Redata program, aimed at attracting data centers, requires the exclusive use of renewable or clean energy, disregarding natural gas as an eligible fuel. This contradicts the model that drives AI in the United States.
Proposals for Transforming the Gas Sector
To reverse this scenario, structural changes are imperative. The Brazilian Northeast has already demonstrated the power of competition by reducing the average wholesale gas price by 48% between 2019 and 2024. The first measure would be to ensure open access to pre-salt processing, coupled with gas release – the obligation for Petrobras to auction part of its production to other agents.
Experts estimate that with a competitive market, gas could reach 5 or 6 dollars at the producer’s exit, a value that would fundamentally change the economic equation. ANP is expected to decide on gas release by December 2026.
The second front is price transparency. Currently, the gas market in Brazil operates with confidential bilateral contracts. MP 1300/2025 proposes to change this, requiring the registration and settlement of contracts in the same way as the electricity market. With price visibility, competition flourishes, and the Macaé Hub could finally materialize as a market hub.
The third and most transformative change would be the liberation of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas. ANP estimates reserves of 414 trillion cubic feet, but Brazil still prohibits tests, a concern that hinders the discovery of immense energy potential.
Brazil’s Opportunity Window in the Energy Transition
The next decade projects global investments of over two trillion dollars in AI data centers. While the American model begins to show its limits – with rising gas prices and grid congestion – a new window is opening for other markets.
Brazil has a strategic advantage: a robust renewable energy matrix and, deep offshore, a significant volume of natural gas that can serve as a transition energy fuel and provide the firmness that AI demands.
The AI race is an interconnected chain of molecule, electron, and byte. Brazil has the raw material, the molecule, but urgently needs to learn to price it competitively. Bloom Energy developed where gas has a fair price, not just where it is abundant.
Mastering the art of valuing its own resources will be the determining factor for Brazil to host the next waves of innovation in energy and technological infrastructure.
The CEO of Grupo Bolt Energy, Gustavo Ayala, emphasizes:
this distinction will decide the country’s future in this global scenario.
