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To: Salt'n'Peppa who wrote (101635)	5/27/2008 2:28:05 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 206131

Short of rigs, Petrobras delays some subsalt tests A shortage of drilling rigs and looming relinquishment deadlines have made Brazil's state oil company Petrobras delay tests on potentially huge subsalt finds like Carioca and move the rigs to other blocks. Petrobras (PETR4.SA: Quote, Profile, Research)(PBR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) chief executive, Jose Sergio Gabrielli, said on Monday production evaluation tests would have to wait and expected no additional information on the Carioca reserve any time soon. "We ceased doing tests on Carioca to fulfill the compulsory exploration program, so we don't have to relinquish areas," he told reporters. Some geologists say Carioca and three adjacent blocks may have probable reserves of over 30 billion barrels. If no oil is found in blocks under concessions until a certain deadline, operators have to return parts and then the whole of the area to the government. Gabrielli said the Bem-te-vi, or BMS-8, area, where Petrobras announced a light oil find last week, would also have to wait for new equipment to get more information about the crude accumulation. The rig from there has been transferred to another subsalt area, known as Iara, he said. Exploration and production director Guilherme Estrella said that by the beginning of next year, Petrobras has to inform the National Petroleum Agency about oil finds in all the area with subsalt crude accumulations. The offshore area extends along the coasts of three Brazilian states. "We have to present evaluation plans for all those fields by the end of 2010; we are running against time," he said. Petrobras on Monday launched a previously announced plan to contract 40 drilling ships and platforms to operate in deep and ultra-deep waters by 2017. The priority will be to build the units in Brazil, but Gabrielli said the domestic market was not ready to meet the demand in the short term. "We will evaluate how much the international market can deliver and will see what are the possibilities of the local shipyards. The international volume will tell us how many units we need to contract in Brazil," he said. With oil prices chalking up record highs, oil exploration equipment is in short supply and becoming more expensive. Gabrielli said renting a deepwater rig cost, on average, between $400,000 and $600,000 a day. Petrobras has only made production evaluation tests at the Tupi subsalt field, where it made a recoverable reserve estimate last November of between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels. Estrella said two more wells will be drilled there and a long-term production test will start on Tupi in March next year to produce 10,000 to 20,000 barrels per day. "Only then will we have more concrete information on the reservoir," he said. He said a theory that some reserves in the subsalt cluster were continuous has not yet been confirmed, but it was a possibility that required more studies. Analysts are bullish on Brazil's oil potential, expecting the country to become a major world oil producer with big reserves of light oil in the subsalt cluster. Foreign companies like Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research), BG Group Plc (BG.L: Quote, Profile, Research), Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Hess Corp (HES.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Portugal's Galp (GALP.LS: Quote, Profile, Research) have stakes in high-potential subsalt blocks along with Petrobras. (Reporting by Denise Luna; Writing by Andrei Khalip; Editing by James Dalgleish)