Major oil discovery for Brazil
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
New York Times
RIO DE JANEIRO — While some of the world’s largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America’s largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel.
The new oil, along with refining projects under way by Petrobras, the national oil company, could eventually make Brazil a larger exporter of gasoline as well, adding to supplies in the United States and other countries where it is all but impossible to build new refineries.
The subsalt basin that contains Tupi, the new deepwater field estimated to hold the equivalent of five billion to eight billion barrels of light crude oil, is creating a buzz among the world’s largest oil companies. They have struggled lately to find global-scale projects worth investing in, even with oil touching $100 a barrel. Tupi is the world’s biggest oil find since a 12-billion-barrel field discovered in 2000 in Kazakhstan.
Talk by the Brazilian government of tightening investment terms for the new offshore exploration frontier, however, could quickly curb international enthusiasm. Brazil is even drawing comparisons with Bolivia and Venezuela, two South American countries that have nationalized parts of their energy industries in recent years.
Still, Brazil has remained far more open to foreign investment than those neighbors, and it has encouraged international oil companies like Exxon Mobil, Shell and Chevron to pour billions of dollars into offshore exploration, though so far without much success.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
RIO DE JANEIRO — While some of the world’s largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America’s largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel.
The new oil, along with refining projects under way by Petrobras, the national oil company, could eventually make Brazil a larger exporter of gasoline as well, adding to supplies in the United States and other countries where it is all but impossible to build new refineries.
The subsalt basin that contains Tupi, the new deepwater field estimated to hold the equivalent of five billion to eight billion barrels of light crude oil, is creating a buzz among the world’s largest oil companies. They have struggled lately to find global-scale projects worth investing in, even with oil touching $100 a barrel. Tupi is the world’s biggest oil find since a 12-billion-barrel field discovered in 2000 in Kazakhstan.
Talk by the Brazilian government of tightening investment terms for the new offshore exploration frontier, however, could quickly curb international enthusiasm. Brazil is even drawing comparisons with Bolivia and Venezuela, two South American countries that have nationalized parts of their energy industries in recent years.
Still, Brazil has remained far more open to foreign investment than those neighbors, and it has encouraged international oil companies like Exxon Mobil, Shell and Chevron to pour billions of dollars into offshore exploration, though so far without much success.
(Continued here.)
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