MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil begins test extraction of oil 4.500 mts. below seabed

Pte. Lula da Silva and Petrobras CEO Sergio Gabrielli

President Lula da Silva inaugurated this week Brazil's first extraction of oil from deep waters which highlighted techniques to be applied to vast oil fields found even farther offshore and at greater depths.

Lula da Silva and several cabinet ministers led the ceremony on board the oil platform P-34 from government managed Petrobras and located at the Jubarte oil field 77 kilometers off the coast of the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo. Dressed in an orange boiler suit Lula washed his hands in the first splash of the extracted light crude and then marked his oily fingers on his suit and on those of Petrobras CEO Sergio Gabrielli and cabinet chief Dilma Rousseff. "I'm sure nobody in the 500 years of Brazil's history has experienced such a moment", said the exultant Brazilian president. The 15.000 barrels of oil the platform will pump up each day come from a depth of 4.4 kilometers below the sea bed, including a layer of salt 100 to 200 meters thick. Besides, the platform is in 2.000 meters deep water. Petrobras considers P-34 a test facility for the far greater challenge contained in the Santos Basin, farther south between 250 and 800 kilometers off Rio de Janeiro state. The basin contains the Tupi field, whose discovery was announced last November and is estimated to contain up to eight billion barrels of oil, enough to turn Brazil into a significant oil exporter. Other, subsequent discoveries in the Santos Basin suggest Tupi may be just the tip of a huge reservoir of light crude that, in total, could conceivably triple Brazil's proven oil reserves, which are currently a proven 14 billion barrels. But the catch is that Tupi's oil is located seven kilometers under the waves, under a salt layer one kilometer thick. Salt is a significant challenge to oil extraction because it shifts and exerts pressure, creating the risk of breaking pipes. In March next year, exploratory pumping will start in the Tupi field and, if it proves viable, commercial pumping will begin in 2012. Analysts say that up to 600 billion dollars worth of investment in research, logistics and technology are required to suck up the oil under Brazil's Atlantic waters. Petrobras has already planned 112.4 billion US dollars worth of investment over the next four years, but CEO Sergio Gabrielli has said that amount will "surely increase" because of the new oil finds. Lula da Silva said that when he was first told about the huge deposits by Gabrielli, with charts displayed over his desk, and he begun talking about the pre-salt layer, "I was baffled, the only salt I knew about was in my stake and salad". And during the three following days "I repeatedly asked myself if what I was told was effectively truth". But with Mines and Energy minister Edison Lobao, "we managed it".