Petrobras to Expand Pre-Salt Oil Drilling to Angola in 2012
Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4), Latin America’s largest company by market value, said it will start drilling oil in deep waters off Africa early next year on bets the area may mirror Brazilian deposits across the Atlantic.
The Brazilian state-run company will start drilling at Block-26 in the Benguela Bay off Angola’s southern coast and plans to start tapping reserves off Namibia, according to a statement sent by e-mail today. Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based company is known, operates and holds a 30 percent stake in the block.
Oil companies are lining up to explore reserves in Angolan deep waters because they are “believed to be analogous to pre- salt Brazil,” Tim Dodson, vice president for exploration at Statoil ASA (STL), said in a statement today. BP Plc, Statoil, Repsol YPF SA (REP), Total SA (FP) and ConocoPhillips (COP) were among companies that won licenses to drill in Angola’s pre-salt area today.
The fields are known as pre-salt because oil is located below layers of salt under the seabed. In Brazilian waters the salt layer is two kilometers (1.2 miles) thick.
Petrobras plans to invest $224.7 billion through 2015 as it prepares to tap the pre-salt reserves, which included the biggest discovery in the Americas in the past three decades.
The Brazilian company also said in the statement that it forecasts at least 12 rigs will start operating in Brazil next year.
Petrobras rose 3 percent to 21.76 reais at 3:28 p.m. in Sao Paulo trading. It’s down 20 percent this year, compared with a 19 percent drop in the benchmark Bovespa index.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rodrigo Orihuela in Rio de Janeiro at rorihuela@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net
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