Brazil: China wants partnership with Petrobras for oil drilling off Chinese coast [ 2008-07-08 ]
Sao Paulo, Brazil, 8 July – China plans to invite Brazilian state oil company to drill for oil off the country’s coast, a region with estimated production potential of some 7 billion barrels of oil.
In return China wants the opportunity to explore oil along some 800 kilometres of the Brazilian coast, where large reserves were recently discovered.
“We know we have a lot of oil,” said the chairman of Chinese state company CNOOC, Fu Chengyu, speaking to Brazilian newspaper, Estado de São Paulo.
“But that oil is in deep waters adn we know that Petrobras today is the company that can best identify that. Therefore we are going to invite the company to work with us on this project,” he noted.
The Chinese government said, meanwhile, that the CNOOC, “also wants to explore the possibility of acting on the Brazilian coast, where there is an indication of large reserves.”
Fu Chengyu said that each inhabitant of a developed country consumes 17 barrels of oil per year, seven times more than in an emerging country and 17 times more than a Chinese consumer.
Last week Petrobras and Sinopec, one of the biggest land-based oil producers in China signed a memorandum of understanding to increase trade in oil.
Petrobras has so far this year exported some 12 million barrels of oil to China, as a result of an export contract with the Chinese company. (macauhub)
