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Exxon, Hess Find Oil in Brazil’s Tupi Pre-Salt Area (Update4)

By Jeb Blount and Joao Lima - January 20, 2009 16:12 EST

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp., Hess Corp. and Petroleo Brasileiro SA found evidence of oil at an offshore block in Brazil’s Santos Basin in an area close to the Americas’ largest oil discovery in three decades.

The discovery in the so-called “pre-salt cluster” was in water 2,223 meters (7,294 feet) deep and in a well expected to have a final depth of 4,974 meters, the National Petroleum Agency said today on its Web site. The companies haven’t determined if the find can be developed commercially.

The BM-S-22 block operated by Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil is adjacent to the Carioca field, where Petrobras, as the Brazilian state-controlled oil company is known, along with Repsol YPF SA and BG Group Plc, have found oil. It is also about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Tupi, a field that Petrobras says holds as much as 8 billion barrels of oil, making it the biggest discovery in the Americas since 1976.

“It’s only a matter of time before this area in Brazil becomes a major future oil supply,” Fadel Gheit, managing director for oil and gas research at Oppenheimer & Co., said in a phone interview today from New York.

Wildcat Exploration

Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, and Hess each own 40 percent of the concession, while 20 percent is held by Petrobras.

Hess spokesman Jon Pepper and Exxon Mobil spokesman Patrick McGinn confirmed that Exxon Mobil’s Brazilian unit had notified local officials of the discovery. The name of the well is Azulao- 1. Exxon Mobil plans to drill the well to target depth.

Petrobras’s press office was closed for a Rio de Janeiro holiday.

BM-S-22 has the potential to be “the most significant wildcat exploration well in Exxon Mobil’s portfolio,” Neil McMahon, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said in a note to clients earlier this month. “The company is going back to basics with a renewed focus on exploration.”

The block is one of 13 so-called wildcat exploration projects that involve wells far from previous discoveries that Exxon Mobil is drilling or is scheduled to begin worldwide.

The pre-salt cluster, in the Atlantic Ocean, is part of a region that extends about 800 kilometers along the coast of Brazil from Espirito Santo state to Santa Catarina state. The cluster’s oil has been found in waters as deep as 3,000 meters and as much as 7,000 meters below the seabed beneath a layer of salt.

High Temperatures

BM-S-22 is more than 350 kilometers south of Rio de Janeiro. It was drilled using the West Polaris drilling rig, the petroleum agency said.

The oil discovered in areas nearby will take 5 to 10 years to begin producing in large quantities, Gheit said. The fields are also complex and have some of the highest pressures and temperatures that any company has dealt with, he said.

Exxon Mobil shares fell $1.81, or 2.3 percent, to $76.29, while Hess dropped 99 cents to $51.99 at 4:10 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Petrobras preferred shares, the company’s most-traded class of stock, declined 77 centavos, or 3.2 percent, to 23.06 reais in Sao Paulo trading.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joao Lima in Lisbon at jlima1@bloomberg.net; Jeb Blount in Rio de Janeiro at jblount@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts in Buenos Aires at dcrofts@bloomberg.net