|
 Brazil's state-controlled oil multinational Petrobras announced this Wednesday, after the exchange market had already closed in Brazil, that once again it did strike oil. This time the oil giant found the product in pre-salt submarine reservoirs in the bloc known as BM-S-8, in an area called Bem-Te-Vi. in the Santos basin, in the littoral of São Paulo state.
The new find will be explored by Petrobras (66%) in partnership with Shell (20%) and Galp Energia (14%).
According to the Petrobras press office, only a preliminary test has been conducted and for that reason it's not possible at present to tell the size of the discovered field. The state company will have to make other tests to find out among other things the quality and the volume of the oil. There is no forecast for when such a study will me carried out.
Media reports tell that Petrobras has become the third-largest publicly-traded company in the Americas. With a market value of US$ 295.6 billion Petrobras now has surpassed Microsoft, which has a market value of US$ 274 billion.
ExxonMobil Corp. (489 billion) and General Electric Co. (320 billion) top the list. GE, which is the world's biggest provider of power-plant turbines, jet engines, medical imaging machines, aircraft leasing and locomotives, slumped the most in more than two decades early April after profit unexpectedly declined. The GE stock is down 15% this year.
In the last 12 months Petrobras shares soared 110% compared to a 3.5% setback for Microsoft. Petrobras market value has quadrupled since 2004.
Petrobras said it is also the sixth-largest company by market value in the world, having recently surpassed the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd., which has a market value of 289.3 billion.
Petrobras only recently had surpassed Royal Dutch Shell PLC in market value to become the world's third-biggest publicly traded oil and gas company after Exxon and Russian gas producer OAO Gazprom, which also has significant oil production.
Last April Petrobras announced the discovery of huge offshore oil and gas deposits in the pre-salt layer which could be one of the largest hits in recent years with estimated reserves of 33 billion barrels.
Petrobras' average oil and natural gas production in Brazil reached 2,157,226 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe) in April, up 5.1% from a year ago and 2% above the 2,114,089 boe extracted last March.
According to a company report Petrobras' daily production capacity is expected to grow an additional 500,000 barrels in 2008, when four more platforms begin operations, three of which in the Campos Basin and one in the Espírito Santo Sea. Furthermore, the five platforms that started producing in 2007 are also slated to reach their maximum capacities during the year.
Natural gas domestic fields' production reached 50,064 million cubic meters per day, up 5.4% from the 43.375 million cubic meters of April 2007.
Including all production, oil and gas, domestic and abroad, Petrobras output in April was equivalent to 2,381,045 boe per day, up 3.7% over April 2007, and 1.8% above March 2008.
Bzz/Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
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.
This message is for your eyes only:
You are authorized to suspend your digging efforts in Alberta and return to your home base.Further, you are entitled to have as many cases of Brazilian beer as you want as a reward for all your efforts.