Petrobras seeking sub-salt ‘big picture’

Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras will begin high definition seismic testing of deep-water su-salt fields off the country to see if they are part of one giant sea of oil, the company’s exploration and production co-ordinator Eduardo Alessandro Molinari, said.

"The current seismic data we have show there is good continuity. We want to evaluate again better," Molinari said after a shareholders meeting yesterday, Reuters reported. The seismic test will be run on the Tupi sub-salt field, discovered in December by Petrobras and its partners BG and Galp, and thought to contain between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Petrobras has the most data on the Tupi of all the recent sub-salt fields. If the many sub-salt fields around Tupi, including the Carioca, Yara, Caramba, Bem-te-vi, Parati, Guara and Jupiter prove to be connected as one massive ocean of oil, Petrobras and partners in the various fields are expected to lay out a joint development plan for all the blocks together, according to the "unitisation" clause of the 1995 Petroleum Law. Petrobras partners in the subsalt cluster around Tupi include Galp, ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess, BG Group, Repsol YPF and Shell. The light grade oil and gas lies under a 2000-metre salt cap formed after South America broke off from Africa millions of years ago. "Looking at the seismic data of that area of Tupi, we see a continuity," Molinari said. "Unitisation will have to happen, in any situation, even if there is change in the regulatory framework." Brazil is studying changes in its Petroleum Law, which is currently not especially well suited to deal with large fields of oil. The government would also like to take a larger percentage of the profits involved with such massive deposits. But current legislation and regulation would be honoured for current concession holders, the government stresses.
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