Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- BG Group Plc, the U.K.’s third- largest natural-gas producer, plans to invest $20 billion in Brazil over the next 10 years, Chairman Robert Wilson said today at the Financial Times Investing in Brazil Summit in London.

The U.K. explorer, along with Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Lisbon-based Galp Energia SGPS SA, is developing the giant Tupi field offshore Brazil, which is on schedule to start pumping at the end of 2010 and is the biggest oil discovery in the Americas since Mexico’s Cantarell in 1976.

Tupi holds between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels of oil and gas. BG, based in Reading, England, had already said it intends to invest $4 billion to $5 billion through 2012 to develop pilot projects at the Tupi, Iara and Guara fields. Its net share of output from the fields will reach 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day by 2020, BG said in its annual report.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in August announced a plan to increase government control of oil and gas reserves to boost state revenue. The country’s Congress has since been debating new rules for the so-called pre-salt area, which gets its name from the mile-thick layer of salt that traps billions of barrels of crude oil under the Atlantic seabed.

BG cited “outstanding results” in Brazilian exploration in its third-quarter earnings statement on Oct. 28, saying the drilling program in the Santos Basin confirmed “the technical and economic robustness of the pre-salt play.” The company has already invested $5 billion on development of its Brazilian assets.

For Related News and Information: Stories on BG in Brazil: BG/ LN <Equity> TCNI BRAZIL <GO> Stories on Brazilian Oil: TNI BRAZIL OIL <GO>

Last Updated: November 5, 2009 07:03 EST