Petrobras, Brazil's state-led oil producer, and London-headquartered BP Plc (BP.L), found oil in a deep-water offshore well in a new area for exploration off Brazil's northeast coast, the company said in a securities filing on Thursday.
The oil was discovered in the BM-CE-2 concession in the offshore Ceara basin. The concession is 60 percent owned by Petrobras and 40 percent by BP, the filing said.
The find is one of the first off Brazil's northeast coast. There, Petrobras and other companies are testing theories that the same geological systems that created and trapped oil off the West coast of Africa are present in Brazil's Northeast.
Brazil's Northeast was once connected to West Africa before the powerful forces of continental drift pulled them apart over millions of years. The discovery of enormous oil fields in southeast Brazil near Rio de Janeiro was in part influenced by the discovery of offshore oil in Angola.
The discoveries near Rio de Janeiro have in turn led to a rise in exploration along the coast of South West Africa.
Petrobras, which is the operator of the concession in Ceara, said it found a 290 meter long hydrocarbon column in the well with 140 meters of reservoirs, or "net pay". The well has been named Pecem.
The oil was found in sliclastic structures in the Paracuru formation 76 kilometers off the coast near Fortaleza, Brazil, Petrobras said.
So far, the well has been drilled in 2,129 meters (6,985 feet) of water and to a depth of 4,410 meters beneath the seabed. Petrobras plans to extend the well to 5,500 meters.
The well is being drilled by Diamond Offshore Inc.'s (DO.N) Ocean Courage semisubmersible floating rig. The rig is leased to Petrobras for $406,850 a day through February 2015, according to Brazil's petroleum regulator, the ANP and Diamond Offshore.
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