In Brazil, Energy Finds Put Country at a Whole New Power Level

RJ - For those who like the expansion of oil in Brazil, Walter Link could rank near the top. A U.S. oil tycoon, was the former chief geologist for Standard Oil Company of New Jersey to Brazil who was hired to find its oil reserves.
In 1954 he was created Petrobras, the national oil company, six years later, describing the results controversial warm. Advises Brazil to meet its petroleum needs, recommended going offshore or overseas.
Petrobras alone has grown by mixing progress with setbacks, such as Brazil struggled to drag dependence on foreign oil. But the discovery of huge offshore oil Petrobras in recent years now allow that he could surpass Exxon Mobil.
"Petrobras is involved in the company, by far the largest industry in Brazil's history," said Norman Gall, director of the Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics in Sao Paulo.
Mr. Gall said that Petrobras' annual spending estimated at more than $ 45 billion by 2020, exceed the budget for NASA in the 1960s.
Brazil, wants to maintain investments to increase oil production even when the turbulence hits the financial markets in Brazil and worldwide. She is leading a change in the oil industry in Latin America, with the potential to change the geopolitics of energy.
Brazil's rise to power of the oil is part of a broad expansion of energy production in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the United States and Canada. But it also offers a living example of the reordering of the hierarchy in Latin America in the traditional energy energy exporters
Strategists say the energy profile of Latin America will grow with the global economy is based more on a variety of energy sources, such as ethanol from sugarcane and lithium found in the vast salt high in the Andes. New discoveries in the last month also highlight the potential to open new frontiers for oil.
If Colombia improves the security even more, employees can see production increase to 1.7 million barrels by 2020. In Brazil alone, can increase the production of just over 2 million barrels per day to over 5 million in 2020.
Explosion of the region's oil is notable not only for producers to increase, but also because the energy rich countries in the ideological sphere of influence of Venezuela, who have asserted greater state control of natural resources, are largely being excluded gains out.
Perhaps no country in the region illustrates the potential - and its ability to be worse - than Venezuela, which surpassed Saudi Arabia this year as the country with the largest oil reserves of 1.19 trillion barrels.
Other countries in the region, notably in Colombia, noted the experience of Brazil in the 1990's Petrobras to expose to market forces through the issuance of shares now trade in Sao Paulo and New York, while maintaining control of the state.
Of course, big challenges still await the energy industry in Brazil. The fiendish complexity of producing oil from its "pre-salt" discoveries off the coast of the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, located in waters 3,000 meters or 9,800 feet deep and nearly 4,000 feet in the sand , and rock salt, have some investors to question whether Petrobras is overextending itself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/business/energy-environment/in-brazil-energy-finds-put-country-at-a-whole-new-power-level.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=brazil&st=cse&scp=8

Bruna Lajus