MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Petrobras begins refining oil from the pre-salt basin

The Brazilian oil corporation has decided to concentrate investments and efforts to tap domestic resources.

Brazil’s government managed oil corporation Petrobras reported this week it had begun refining oil from the Tupi field, located at the pre-salt area of Santos Basin which is Brazil’s great hope for becoming a major player in the world’s hydrocarbons market.

Petrobras said in an official release the start of the process at the Capuava Refinery will be relevant to evaluate the quality and potentiality of the oil products produced using the pre-salt oil.

“The oil, offloaded from Tupi Extend Well Test production system, presented the following characteristics: gravity of 28.5 degrees API, low sulfur and low acidity” reported Petrobras.

Petrobras also said that this week it notified the country's National Petroleum Agency that it had discovered signs of oil at an inland Espirito Santo Basin block. Apparently traces of oil were found in a well drilled at the ES-T-382 inland block. The 4BRSA742ES well was drilled by the DRILLFOR-04 rig to a target depth of 635 meters, ANP drilling data showed.

However the disclosure is routine and do not indicate commercial viability.

Not so encouraging news came from Iran where Petrobras said exploration in the offshore Tusan block in the Gulf had resulted “geological unappealing”.

The Brazilian corporation International Director Jorge Zelada said “it is a small reserve ... we have not yet finished the report, but the expectation is that it does not have commercial possibilities.”

Petrobras invested around 100 million US dollars to drill two wells in Tusan and in February said it had found signs of oil.

The company had also been evaluating data from a block in the Caspian Sea, but decided against an exploration campaign because the block appeared to hold mostly natural gas, rather than oil, in an area that did not have infrastructure for gas production.

Petrobras produces around 215.000 barrels per day of oil outside Brazil but is mostly focusing on developing massive offshore reserves buried under a thick layer of salt off Brazil's coast.

However it continues to develop upstream projects in Turkey, Namibia and the Gulf of Mexico, but is not seeking out new foreign opportunities because it wants to channel resources toward sub-salt projects, Zelada said.