Petrobras confirms oil off the Amapá coast but cannot yet estimate the volume

Tuesday, August 18th 2026 - 06:56 UTC

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Brazil's state-controlled Petrobras confirmed on Monday the presence of oil in the Morpho exploratory well, located in ultra-deep waters off the northern state of Amapá, in the Foz do Amazonas basin. The company cautioned that it cannot yet estimate the volume found or the viability of commercial production. Read full article

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Brasileiro
The Brazilian Equatorial Margin oil basin extends for 2,130 km from Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte. Preliminary studies indicate a total of 200 billion barrels of recoverable oil (exceptionally high-quality Brent crude). If this expectation is confirmed, and combined with existing pre-salt reserves, Brazil would become the holder of the world's third-largest oil reserves, trailing only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/f1LeTjaOyfI
Aug 18th, 2026 - 09:18 am - Link - Report abuse 0
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FortHay
Well, it's a long time coming. https://www.aljazeera.com/#flips-6403637499112:0, I was running said wireline logs in wildcat wells offshore Belem and in Maranhão during the eighties and while we occasionally found some paydirt, none of the exploratory wells back then yielded commercial production. Persistence and prudent, intelligent investment may have finally paid off. Lula is absolutely correct as to the significance of this potential discovery and for any nation to discount the fundamental power of continued hydrocarbon development is to deny reality.
Aug 18th, 2026 - 04:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 0
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Pugol-H
Ok, while we are still needing fossil fuels it makes sense to use the deposits we have.

For us the North Sea, no point in buying the same oil/gas from Norway or importing it from halfway round the world (with the added carbon footprint that has), when we can extract it ourselves.

However, we cannot use anything like all the Coal/oil/gas reserves available to us and expect to survive as a species.

The overall plan has to be Carbon neutral as fast as possible, much of these new discoveries will never be used, either because we have gone Carbon neutral, or because there is no one left to use them.

Real world.
Aug 18th, 2026 - 10:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 0
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