On March 27, 2009, the Energy Club of Columbia Business School and the Energy Association of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs hosted the 2009 Energy Symposium, "Imagining Tomorrow: Meeting Energy Demands in a Carbon-Constrained World." This year's conference included the panel "Unconventional Oil & Gas, Deepwater Exploration." This panel explored the role unconventional oil can play in enhancing energy security in an increasingly carbon-sensitive world. In this discussion, Ted Helms, global head of investor relations at Petrobras, highlighted Brazil not only as an emerging leader in the unconventional oil industry but also as an example of a company with a global energy policy.

Ted Helms of Petrobras asserted that while deepwater exploration is unconventional for most companies most companies, it is conventional for Petrobras. Approximately 90 percent of the Brazilian energy company's production is offshore, and Petrobras accounts for nearly one-quarter of the world's production of deepwater oil. This form of oil exploration is difficult not only because of the vast water depths but also because of the challenges in breaking stubborn rocks with low permeability as well as in extracting viscous heavy oil.