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Rio De Janeiro: An offshore find by Brazilian state oil company Petrobras in partnership with BG Group and Repsol-YPF may be the world's biggest discovery in 30 years, the head of Brazil's National Petroleum Agency said on Monday.
Haroldo Lima told reporters the find, known as Carioca, could contain 33 billion barrels of oil equivalent, five times the recent giant Tupi discovery. That would further boost Brazil's prospects as an important world oil province and the source of new crude in the Americas.
"It could be the world's biggest discovery in the past 30 years, and the world's third-biggest currently active field," Lima, head of the government's oil and fuel market regulator, told reporters at an industry event in Rio de Janeiro.
Lima said he obtained the data from Petrobras at an informal level. But the National Petroleum Agency distanced itself from Lima's remarks, saying in a statement that they were "unofficial" and simply repeated information already in the public domain.
"All the data were already in the public domain, having even been published in the February edition of World Oil magazine, in the 'what's new in exploration' column signed by Arthur Berman,'' the agency said in a statement.
Petrobras also declined to confirm the estimate and said that studies on the find continued.
Still, Petrobras shares soared on the news, finishing 5.63 per cent higher at 82.97 reais after gaining more than seven per cent earlier in the session.
Lima would not say whether the preliminary reserve estimate he provided was recoverable or in-place. Recoverable reserves can constitute less than a third of in-place reserves.
Last year Petrobras put Tupi's recoverable reserves at between five billion and eight billion barrels of oil equivalent, most of it light oil.
Petrobras tested one well at Carioca last year and is still drilling another. The company made the Tupi recoverable reserve estimate based on tests from two wells.
Petrobras said in a statement the second well had not yet reached the subsalt level and "more conclusive data on the potential of the block will be known after the evaluation process is finished."
Analysts said the estimate was probably still very preliminary, although it did not contrast with some geologists' forecasts made in the past. Recent reports by UBS and Credit Suisse also said the reserves could surpass those of Tupi.
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