|
 Brazilian state-controlled oil and gas multinational Petrobras announced that the deepwater offshore Guará field holds between 1.1 and 2 billion barrels of oil. In an official release Brazil's government managed oil company Petrobras said initial output may be as much as 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day by 2012.
Guará is in the so-called pre-salt region and exploratory drilling has proved successful, said the release. Petrobras has spent billions of dollars to tap oil deposits off Brazil's coast including the Tupi field, the largest discovery in the Americas since Mexico's Cantarell in 1976.
Petrobras's plans to spend a record US$ 174.4 billion over the next five years to boost crude output by 53% and have Brazil among the top ten oil producers and exporters of the world.
Petrobras is the operator of Guará, with a 45% stake; Reading, UK-based BG has 30% and Repsol-YPF 25%. The companies announced they will use a 120,000 barrel-a-day floating production, storage and offloading vessel, known as an FPSO, to develop Guará.
Petrobras last year made a discovery in Guará, part of the BM-S-9 area that also includes the fields known as Carioca and Iguaçu. The company said April 16 that Iguaçu contained "significant" resources while declining to estimate its size.
"Guará is only one of the wells drilled in the BM-S-9 block (where the company also drilled Carioca, Iguaçu and is drilling Abaré), which means that the block's potential could be significantly higher," according to local oil market analysts.
"It is clear that the Santos Basin pre-salt will make a very material contribution to the production and cash flow of BG Group for many years to come," BG Chief Executive Officer Frank Chapman said in a statement.
Petrobras wants to increase output to about 3.66 million barrels a day by 2013, compared with 2.4 million barrels a day in 2008, the company has said. Repsol said the estimate of recoverable reserves at Guará is equivalent to between two and four years of Spain's oil and gas demand.
"The discoveries of the last few years represent significant contingent resources which will guarantee the growth in reserves and production in the coming years," Repsol said in a statement.
The pre-salt region runs 800 kilometers along the Brazilian coast and has oil deposits beneath a layer of salt resting as deep as 3.000 meters below the ocean surface and another 5.000 meters under the seabed.
Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Chief Executive Sergio Gabrielli said he plans to soothe U.S. and European investors and executives during a week of meetings that begin in New York on Monday. His top priority: persuading executives at major oil companies that they will have an important role in developing the fields.
"We have many important industry partners who will be able to share in the reserves," Mr. Gabrielli said in an interview Wednesday. All of the nation's existing contracts will remain in force, he said.
It's an important distinction in an era of resource nationalism. As oil prices rose in recent years, Russia, Venezuela and Ecuador rewrote oil-industry rules in favor of the state and altered pre-existing contracts, hurting relationships with international oil companies. By distinguishing itself from such actions, Brazil is seeking to ensure access to the corporate know-how necessary to exploit hard-to-reach oil deposits.
Petrobras shares tumbled last week after the government announced plans to acquire additional shares in Petrobras and pay for them with rights to five billion barrels of oil in an unspecified oil field, instead of with cash. The announcement provoked concern about how the rights would be valued, especially since the oil discovery lies deep beneath the seabed under a layer of shifting salt. While the Brazilian government is Petrobras's controlling shareholder, a substantial number of shares trade in Sao Paulo and New York.
Comments by Brazilian politicians made matters worse. A Brazilian senator last week told reporters that the oil rights will be worth around $10 a barrel. Morgan Stanley estimates fair value at closer to $5.80.
"The timing of this, the valuation, there is a lot of uncertainty," said Conrad Saldanha, manager of the Neuberger Berman Emerging Markets Equity Fund, 3.5% of which was in Petrobras shares as of July 31. "But the fact that this is one of the largest oil finds we've seen is positive news."
Mr. Gabrielli, a bearded 59-year-old academic who holds an economics doctorate from Boston University, said his firm will pay "fair value" for the development rights. He said he plans to hire established appraisal firms to help make sure that happens. The oil industry relies on a small group of oil appraisal firms to certify reserves and provide information in oil-rights auctions. Hiring one or more of these firms may help boost investor confidence, analysts said.
Investors this week bid Petrobras shares back to nearly where they traded before rumors of the government's plan began circulating. "The question is how much will be paid for the five billion barrels. But over time, the company has done right by its shareholders, and the government has been very pragmatic," said Craig Shaw, co-manager of the Harding Loevner Emerging Markets Fund, which holds Petrobras shares.
Mr. Gabrielli's trip may begin on a high note. Petrobras said late Tuesday that tests showed that its Guara deep-water field holds as many as two billion barrels of oil.
Mr. Gabrielli said Petrobras's free-market ethos will remain intact, even as the government increases its stake. Brazilian law prohibits Petrobras from undertaking unprofitable ventures, which will prevent the federal government from using its increased authority over the oil industry from winnowing away Petrobras earnings, he said.
After making the biggest oil discovery in more than three decades, Brazil is seeking a bigger share of oil revenue in order to fund an ambitious social agenda. Under the proposed rule changes, Petrobras is guaranteed a 30% stake in the development of the new fields. The federal government will also take direct stakes in the fields' production and launch a fund to pay for education, social welfare and other programs