Abstract
This paper intends to present a contribution to the development of techniques of decision-making in international projects of exploration and production of petroleum. A case study of the Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) was developed and applied to define priorities among ten offshore exploration investment opportunities around the world offered to a Brazilian petroleum multinational company, according to decision-makers' preferences. The MAUT model proposed shows for the first time a combination of operational, political and technological risks, resulting in a quite complete formulation to describe quantitatively the decision-making process. It is important to emphasize that this paper presents an unpublished model to evaluate political risks whose detailed analysis is currently of extreme importance for international investments in petroleum projects.