By IANS,
Rio de Janeiro : Brazil will set up a new state-owned company to manage prospecting and drilling in its oil fields along the Atlantic coast in an effort to consolidate control over its vast oil reserves, Spain’s EFE news agency reported.
“It would be a 100 percent state-owned company,” energy minister Edison Lobao said in an interview with business daily Valor.
“The new firm would be the owner of the reserves and would hire companies like Petrobras, Esso and Shell to explore those areas as service providers,” the minister said.
India’s state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Petrobras, have agreed to swap interests in oil exploration blocks, as part of efforts to boost economic cooperation between the two countries.
The blocks are located in Maranhão, in the Sergipe-Alagoas Basin and in the Santos Basin.
In 2006 the ONGC bought a 15-percent stake in a Brazilian offshore oil field for about $170 million from Dutch oil giant Shell, after Petrobras agreed to waive its first right to buy that stake once it became available.
In late 2007, Brazil’s already functioning state-owned oil company Petrobras announced it had found the world’s largest oil field called Tupi in the Santos basin.
Tupi could contain between five billion and eight billion barrels of crude oil.
With almost 12 billion barrels, Brazil ranks third in proven oil reserves in the region, after Mexico and Venezuela, and has vast unexploited potential reserves.