MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil's proven oil reserves in the range of 12.6 billion barrels

Brazil at the end of 2007 had 12.623 billion barrels in proven oil reserves, the National Petroleum Agency, ANP, said on its Web site this week. Brazil also had 364.99 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves.

ANP calculates reserves both from Brazil's government owned oil corporation Petrobras and private oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc. (RDSA) or Devon Oil Corp. (DVN) operating in joint ventures in the country. Petrobras in January said that it had proven oil reserves at the end of 2007 of 9.138 billion barrels, if calculated according to the strict criteria of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. ANP also included reserves from fields that are currently being developed, while the SEC demands, among other requirements, that oil companies have firm oil sale contracts for new fields to be considered company reserves. Recently announced massive oil reserves at Petrobras' ultra-deep Tupi field in Brazil's Santos Basin neither count toward Brazil's nor toward Petrobras' reserves yet. Petrobras in November had estimated reserves at Tupi at up to 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Including probable reserves, ANP sees Brazil's total oil reserves at the end of 2007 at 16.888 billion barrels, and gas reserves at 369.96 billion cubic meters. According to the latest international available data Brazil would then figure between the second ten in world oil reserves. The first ten with Saudi Arabia and its impressive 264 billion barrels includes most of OPEC countries plus Canada and Russia. In the following ten comes the United States with 21.4 billion barrels, China, Qatar, Mexico Algiers, Norway, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Argentina figures with 2.3 billion reserves.