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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (33020)	4/13/2008 3:53:36 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 218310

I wouldn't call writing known stereotypes a challenge And I explained the root cause of the stereotype. Message 24492058

To: carranza2 who wrote (33020)	4/14/2008 4:39:56 PM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218310

Petrobras Surges on 33 Billion-Barrel Field Estimate (Update4) By Carlos Caminada and Joe Carroll April 14 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA's stock rose almost 6 percent after the head of Brazil's oil agency said the offshore Carioca prospect may hold the equivalent of 33 billion barrels of crude, which would make it the world's third-largest field. The estimate for the field off Brazil's southeastern coast has yet to be confirmed by Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro- based company is known. Bruno Positiga, a spokesman for Petrobras, said the company is still studying the find. Only Saudi Arabia's Ghawar and Kuwait's Burgan fields are bigger. Ghawar holds an estimated 75 billion to 83 billion barrels of crude; Burgan has as much as 72 billion. Mexico's Cantarell field in the Gulf of Mexico has 18 billion barrels of recoverable reserves, said Dick Gibson, a geologist who advises oil and natural-gas producers. ``If all of those barrels are recoverable, that's a very significant find,'' said Gibson, president of Butte, Montana- based Gibson Consulting. ``That whole area off the coast of Brazil is becoming a new oil province.'' Petrobras shares rose 5.9 percent to 83.13 reais in Sao Paulo trading. Earlier the stock climbed as much as 7.6 percent. The rise in common and preferred shares added 9.2 percent to the company's market valuation, increasing it to 421.9 billion reais ($249.7 billion). The Carioca field, also known as BM-S-9, is located beneath a layer of salt in the deepwater Santos Basin off Brazil's southeastern coast, where Petrobras in November announced the discovery of the 8 billion-barrel Tupi field. With 33 billion barrels of oil, Carioca would be large enough to supply every refinery in the U.S. for six years, according to U.S. Energy Department figures. No Official Information Haroldo Lima, director of Brazil's National Oil Agency, discussed the reserves at a seminar in Rio de Janeiro and said no official information is available yet. Lima's comments were confirmed by Fernando Manso, a spokesman for the agency, and were reported earlier by Folha de S. Paulo. Petrobras is the fourth-most valuable company in the Western Hemisphere, behind Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The field is 45 percent-controlled by Petrobras. DCC Plc's British Gas LP Gas Ltd. holds a 30 percent stake and Repsol SA controls 25 percent. Repsol's U.S. depositary receipts surged as much as 21 percent to $44.85, the stock's largest daily gain. New York-based Hess Corp., which owns stakes in offshore prospects near Carioca, rose as much as 12 percent to $103.55, the biggest increase since 1981. The stock closed 9.1 higher at $101.19. May Be Biggest The Carioca field may become Petrobras' biggest and it may ``significantly'' increase the company's future production, said Eduardo Roche, a fund manager at Rio de Janeiro-based Modal Asset Management. ``The potential for this field is gigantic,'' said Roche, who helps manage about 1 billion reais in bonds and stocks, including Petrobras shares, at Modal. ``Petrobras is among a handful of companies that have been able to renew its reserves. Its capacity to increase future output is absurd.'' Brazil is home to South America's second-largest oil reserves, behind Venezuela, according to London-based BP Plc. ``We haven't seen any discoveries that large in decades because we've punched enough holes in the Earth that we already know where most of the big fields are,'' said Gibson, who has been working in the oil industry since 1975. Petrobras recently created a division to coordinate all exploration projects off the southeast coast, given its potentially large reserves. BG Group Plc on Feb. 7 raised its estimate of reserves in the Tupi field to the equivalent of 12 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil. Majority shareholder Petrobras estimates Tupi holds as much as 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil and natural-gas reserves. Tupi was the largest discovery since Kazakhastan's Kashagan field, which has 12 billion barrels of recoverable reserves. To contact the reporter on this story: Carlos Caminada in Sao Paulo at at ccaminada1@bloomberg.net; Joe Carroll in Chicago at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net