SAO POLO: Will Brazil become the oil capital of the world replacing Saudi Arabia? Oil experts are discussing the issue as two of the three major oil finds of the past thirty years have been discovered in Brazil.
If it turns out to be true, the western hemisphere’s dependence on Saudi oil will decline and India and China will remain its major consumers.
According to a report by Strategic Forecasting, USA, Brazil could be pumping several million gallons of crude daily by 2020.
Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude, Strategic Forecasting said.
Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro in November said the offshore Tupi field may hold eight billion barrels of recoverable crude. Among discoveries in the past 30 years, only the 15-billion-barrel Kashagan field in Kazakhstan is larger.
Haroldo Lima, director of the country's oil agency, last week said another subsea field, Carioca, may have 33 billion barrels of oil. That would be the third biggest field in history, behind only the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia and Burgan in Kuwa.
Carioca is one of seven fields identified so far in the BM-S-9 exploration area, part of a formation called Sugar Loaf.
If additional drilling by Petrobras, as Petroleo Brasileiro is known, confirms the Tupi and Carioca estimates, the fields would contain enough oil to supply every refinery on the US Gulf Coast for 15 years.
The US imports about 10 million barrels of oil a day, or 66 per cent of its needs, according to the Energy Department in Washington. Saudi Arabia was the second-largest supplier in January, behind Canada.
Gulf nations accounted for 23 per cent of US imports, compared with Brazil's 1.7 per cent share. Brazilian crude output rose 1.9 per cent last year to 2.14 million barrels, according to the International Energy Agency
The downside of the new findings is that Petrobras has reportedly said it needs at least three months to determine how much crude Carioca may hold therefore inferences of Brazil's emergence as an oil leader is not conclusive yet, analysts said.
