Brazil’s Libra May Be Americas Top Find in 34 Years

Brazil said an offshore oil field may hold as much as 16 billion barrels of oil, twice initial estimates, which would make it the biggest crude discovery in the Americas in more than three decades.

The government’s Libra field off Brazil’s southeastern coast may have 7.9 billion to 16 billion barrels, said Haroldo Lima, the head of the oil regulator known as the ANP, according to the agency’s press office. The ANP plans to publish a report on drilling at Libra as early as about 11 a.m. New York time, a press official, who can’t be named because of an internal policy, said by telephone from Rio de Janeiro.