Africa Seen Mirroring Brazil in Atlantic Coast Drilling: Energy

The world’s next great oil finds may be buried under a layer of salt more than two miles beneath the seabed off Africa’s Atlantic coast.

The salt excites oil executives because on the South American side of the Atlantic the same mineral capped some of the largest fields found in the last 10 years, putting Brazil on the path to becoming the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. Geologists say the trouble with salt is that it masks what’s underneath, making drilling deepwater exploratory wells a gamble of $60 million or more each.