RIO DE JANEIRO — Oil companies bid for offshore drilling rights in an auction here on Thursday that provided some welcome good news for Brazil’s economy after weeks of political uncertainty and unrest.

The auction, the fourth one since September, came days after a strike by truck drivers over rising diesel prices paralyzed the country for nearly two weeks and prompted the resignation of the chief executive of the state-owned oil company Petrobras. Consortiums that included companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Equinor of Norway bid 3.15 billion reais, about $808 million, and would give the government between 16 percent and 75 percent of the oil they produce — far higher than the minimum amounts set by the government.

“This process and model shows that what we need in Brazil is more competition,” Décio Oddone, head of the National Petroleum Agency, told reporters after the auction.

Thursday’s auction signals that Brazil, Latin America’s biggest economy, could become a more important source of oil for the rest of the world and possibly make up for lower production volumes from countries like Iran and Venezuela. The International Energy Agency has predicted that Brazil will be second only to the United States among non-Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in contributing to the growth in oil supplies over the next several years.