New gas hope: for Brazil
Pre-salt ‘could double Brazil gas supplies’
Brazil's natural gas production could double with supplies from the country's recently discovered pre-salt offshore reserves, consultants Gas Energy Participacoes said.
"Jupiter, Tupi, Iara and Carioca (fields) have the potential to produce 120 million cubic metres per day," Marco Tavares, a director at the consultancy, told reporters yesterday at the Rio Oil & Gas conference in Rio de Janeiro this week.
The Latin American nation's state-run energy giant Petrobras announced last November it had found 5 billion to 8 billion barrels of light crude deep beneath the ocean floor in the Santos basin, Reuters reported.
Some analysts estimate 50 to 80 billion barrels of oil may lie deep below a thick layer of salt under the seabed along a 500-mile (800-kilometre) stretch off Brazil's southern coast.
Tavares said 40 million of the 120 million cubic-metre-per-day potential output would have to be re-injected into the well to optimise oil production but 80 million would be recoverable for domestic use and also export.
"The opportunities that will open up will be fantastic. Even re-injecting 40 million, we will produce more than double what we're producing today," he said.
The investments required to exploit the pre-salt oil and gas are estimated at anywhere from $200 billion to $600 billion.
Most of Brazil's natural gas supply is currently sourced from its impoverished and unstable neighbour Bolivia. Opposition supporters there briefly cut supplies by half last week by tampering with a pipeline amid protests against the president.
Supplies were restored to near their normal 30 million cubic-metre-per-day level by the next day.