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Tuesday, 02 December, 2008, 23:50 GMT | more >>

Lima may face probe over Carioca


Wire services

Brazilian federal prosecutors may launch an investigation into National Petroleum Agency (ANP) head Haroldo Lima for his statements, made earlier this week, over reserves at the Carioca field.

Lima said the field could produce up to 33 billion barrels of oil, citing data gathered "informally" from state-run oil company Petrobras.

The Rio de Janeiro federal public prosecutors' office said it would analyse media reports on Lima's statement regarding the Carioca find to decide whether to launch an inquiry.

Stock market regulator CVM said it considered the announcement "harmful" as it involved public companies and was made by a non-corporate official. Shares in Petrobras and the other partners in Carioca leapt after Lima's comments.

The ANP has distanced itself from Lima’s statement but it did specify that the data was in the public domain after circulating in the media since February.

Petrobras, which saw its shares soar yesterday and add another 1.4% today, said more studies were required on the find without denying the estimate altogether.

Meanwhile, Petrobras boss Jose Sergio Gabrielli told Reuters that the oil giant was still drilling and it would likely take around three months to evaluate the size of the Carioca oil find.

"We are in the middle of drilling activities. We are 3000 metres deep. We will probably go to 7000 metres," Gabrielli said.

"It will take probably one or two months to finish drilling and then we have a time for analysis, which means that probably ... three months from now we'll have information to see what's happening," he said.

If confirmed, the new deep-water sub-salt field off the coast of Sao Paulo state would be the largest find in the world in the past 30 years.

Lima denied that he made any announcement as the estimates were published in the World Oil industry magazine in February.

"Is it that the North American specialised public has the right to know about things happening in Brazil, is it something that the Brazilian specialised audience cannot know? ... I made no announcement," Lima said during a hearing on an unrelated issue before the Senate's economic affairs commission today.

He did not explain why he initially cited the operator of the Carioca field as the informal source of the estimate and denied any attempts to influence stock prices.

"There was no speculation involved," Lima said. "The idea of (influencing the) stock exchange just wasn't there ... I don't even know where this thing called the exchange is," said Lima.


Tuesday, 15 April, 2008, 21:54 GMT  | last updated: Wednesday, 16 April, 2008, 06:54 GMT

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