The pioneering 4-ESS-177 well drilled at the water depth of 708 meters (2,322 feet) off the Espirito Santo state coast, in the BM-ES-5 block, found natural gas at a depth of 3,417 meters, Petrobras said. U.S. company El Paso (EP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is Petrobras' partner in the block with a 35 percent stake.
The same well discovered light oil presence at a depth of 2,416 meters. Petrobras also successfully drilled exploration well 6-ESS-168 in the area, it said.
"That whole area contains reserves of at least 50 billion barrels, as a conservative estimate," said Marcio Mello, for 26 years a researcher at Petrobras’ technology centre, who is now a partner in the consulting firm HRT Petroleum and head of the Brazilian Association of Petroleum Geologists (ABGP).
The government quotes a figure of 70 billion barrels in the three basins, and some people venture an estimate of over 100 billion barrels.
Duende wrote:Great!
Oh... uh, when do we start drilling?
Diamond Offshore Gets Brazil ContractsHOUSTON (AP) -- Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. said Monday it has entered into or extended four deepwater drilling contracts worth about $2.3 billion with Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras
The oil services company's contracts, one of which is new and three of which are extensions, will last through 2014 or 2015 and each includes four semisubmersible drilling rigs. Such rigs feature massive pontoons that are partially filled with water and then held in place with numerous anchors once the structure has been towed to a specific drilling site.
The new contract, for the Ocean Worker rig, has a six-year term and a maximum award of $591 million, in addition to a mobilization fee and a potential 10 percent performance bonus. The Ocean Worker is currently working in Tobago on a six-month contract, and Diamond Offshore expects it to begin work in Brazil in the third quarter of 2008.
In Tupi, for example, it will take around eight years to reach full production, and the whole of its reserves would only meet world consumption needs for three months. Finding other oilfields in the basin will demand huge investment, time, and many exploratory wells dispersed throughout an area four times the size of Switzerland.
For all these reasons, as well as increasing domestic demand for oil-based fuels, Brazil will not become a leading exporter of oil, Mello said.
A billion US dollars have been invested in the exploration of the field and the first of fifteen wells demanded a full year and cost US$ 240 million.
Madpaddy wrote:For the world, finding more oil now is like the chocaholic diabetic finding the keys to Willy Wonkas chocolate factory.
Petrobras' Tupi Field May Have a Larger Neighbor, UBS Says By Jeb Blount
Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA's Tupi offshore field in Brazil, which may contain at much as 8 billion barrels of oil and natural gas, may be eclipsed by an even larger find nearby, UBS AG said.
A geological formation beneath a 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) layer of salt in Brazil's Santos offshore basin, is larger than Tupi and, if oil bearing, may contain ``significantly more'' oil than Tupi, Gustavo Gattass, an analyst with UBS Pactual in Rio de Janeiro, said in a note to clients.
Petrobras, as Brazil's state-controlled oil company is known, Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Repsol YPF SA, BG Group Plc, Hess Corp. and Galp Energia SGPS all have concessions in the neighboring area, Gattass said, referring to the formation as "Sugar Loaf.''
"Through crude measuring it appears that Sugar Loaf's area is about five times largest than that of Tupi,'' Gattass said, citing former Petrobras geologists and studies of Tupi and Sugar Loaf. "We expect the first announcements of a find over the next two months and test results between four and seven months.''
Petrobras announced its Tupi find on Nov. 8. That prompted Brazil's national energy council to remove exploration concessions in areas similar to Tupi from a Nov. 27 auction to study the implications of the discovery. The oil lies beneath as much as 10 kilometers of ocean and rock off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.
BG Group and Galp are partners with Petrobras in Tupi.
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