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LATIN AMERICA |
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Brazilian Oil
Firm Says Offshore Well Holds Up to 1.5
Billion Barrels
RIO DE JANEIRO – OGX, an oil and gas company
formed by billionaire entrepreneur Eike
Batista, said its first well in the offshore
Campos Basin has recoverable reserves of
between 500 million and 1.5 billion barrels
of crude.
“This excellent result highlights the high
petrolific potential of our concessions and
contributes to the reduction of exploratory
risk on our upcoming prospects to be drilled
in the region,” OGX general manager Paulo
Mendonça said Wednesday in a statement to
the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange.
The estimate was provided for the company’s
Vesuvio prospect, its first well in the
BM-C-43 block of the Campos Basin, an
offshore area that currently accounts for
the vast majority of Brazil’s crude output.
The reserves were confirmed after drilling
up to a depth of 2,347 meters (7,695 feet)
in the 1-OGX-1-RJS well, which is located in
waters 140 meters deep and 85 kilometers (53
miles) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro
state, the company said.
OGX announced two weeks ago that it had
found traces of hydrocarbons in a well
drilled in the BM-S-29 block, a
shallow-water area of the promising Santos
Basin, where huge reserves have been
discovered far beneath the ocean floor.
The company, which acquired its first
concessions two years ago and whose shares
began to be publicly traded on the Sao Paulo
Stock Exchange last year, estimates that it
could begin extracting oil in the Santos
Basin in 2011.
OGX has 29 exploration concessions in
Brazil, 22 of them in offshore blocks,
making it that country’s largest
private-sector oil and gas company in terms
of offshore exploratory acreage.
The company is controlled by Grupo EBX, the
mining, metals and oil conglomerate owned by
Batista, reputedly the richest individual in
Brazil. EFE |
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