By Xinhua
Rio De Janeiro : Brazil has found its biggest-ever oil reserves in the Santos Basin, off Rio de Janeiro’s shore, according to the state-owned oil company Petrobras.
The new find would put Brazil “among the countries with large oil and gas reserves”, the national oil company said in a statement.
Petrobras said the reserves have an estimated volume of five to eight billion barrels of light oil and natural gas, and can represent an increase of 40 to 60 percent in the company’s total volume of oil and gas reserves.
Petrobras’ reserves currently are at 12 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), and it produces 1.8 million oil barrels per day, which has allowed Brazil to achieve self-sufficiency in oil and gas production, but not exporter status.