Libra field may contain as much as 16 billion barrels of oil

The Head of Brazil's National Petroleum Regulator (ANP) Haroldo Lima has said that the offshore Libra field may contain as much as 16 billion barrels of oil, twice the previous estimates, which would make it the biggest crude oil discovery in the Americas in over three decades.

The Libra field located in the Santos Basin off the coast of south-eastern Brazil may have 7.9 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil. The Brazilian government owns 100 per cent of the Libra field. Oil reserves of 16 billion barrels would make the Libra field twice as big as nearby Tupi field, which has estimated reserves of between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels.

Libra and Tupi, both in Brazil's Santos Basin, are located in a region known as the pre-salt, which runs 800 kilometers (500 miles) off the coast, holding oil deposits beneath a layer of salt resting as deep as 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) beneath the ocean surface and another 5,000 meters below the seabed.

Source: Bloomberg

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