SAEDNEWS: British Petroleum (BP) has made its largest oil and gas discovery of the past 25 years off the coast of Brazil as it continues to shift its focus away from renewables and back to fossil fuels.
The Santos basin oil and gas discovery, which is located in deep waters, is the company’s 10th oil discovery of the year and could be its largest since its discovery at the Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan in 1999, The Guardian reported.
BP is carrying out further tests on the Santos discovery, made beneath about 2,400 meters of water and 250 miles (400km) off the Brazilian coast, to gauge the potential of the oil and gas basin. It is likely to play a significant role in the company’s plan to increase its oil and gas production to between 2.3m to 2.5m barrels of oil equivalent a day.
The company said on Monday it had also started a new oil extension project in the Gulf of Mexico that should add an extra 20,000 barrels a day to its production. The Argos project would be the first in a series of new projects in the Gulf between now and the end of the decade.
Gordon Birrell, the head of BP’s oil and gas production business, said the discovery was “another success in what has been an exceptional year so far” which had underscored the company’s “commitment to growing our upstream” oil and gas production.
He added that Brazil was an important country for BP, which will explore the potential of establishing “a material and advantaged production hub in the country”.
