Brazilian firm declares oil field commercially viable

Rio de Janeiro, April 26 (IANS/EFE) The OGX oil firm, part of a consortium led by Brazilian magnate Eike Batista, Wednesday declared a crude discovery off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state to be commercially viable.

The field, whose recoverable reserves are estimated at 285 million barrels, has been named Tubarao Martelo (Hammerhead Shark) and is located in shallow waters of the Campos Basin, Brazil's most productive oil region.

It is situated within the boundaries of the BM-C-39 and BM-C-40 exploratory blocks, of which OGX is the lone operator.

The company said in a statement that it plans to start production in the second half of 2013 using two floating production, storage and offloading, or FPSO, units that currently are under construction.

Founded in 2007, OGX last month sold its first shipment of 600,000 barrels of crude, which had been extracted from its deep-water Waimea field in that same basin.

OGX is part of the EBX conglomerate, which also comprises electricity, mining, logistics, shipbuilding, port management and entertainment companies.

Batista, with an estimated fortune of $30 billion, is listed by Forbes magazine as the world's seventh-wealthiest individual.

--IANS/EFE

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