Petrobras discovers 350m barrels high quality offshore crude

SAO POLO, Apr 30 (Commodity Online): Brazil state controlled energy leviathan Petrobras has announced the discovery of new 350 million barrels of high-quality crude deposit off Brazil's southeastern coast. The deposit was identified in the Albacora field of the Campos basin, about 170 km off the coast and at a depth of 4,385 meters. Deposit is part of the newly discovered State-owned pre-salt region spread across 160,000 sq km offshore area holding 80 billion barrels of oil equivalent in depths of up to 7000 metres. Petrobras-the operator of the fields-will have 30 per cent stake in the consortium that is authorised to explore and produce the oil from the region and can be awarded contracts without undergoing a competitive bidding process.