Bloomberg: Petrobras Hires 80% of Deepwater Rigs, Inflates Rents
May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, leased about 80 percent of the world's deepest-drilling offshore rigs to explore prospects including the Western Hemisphere's biggest discovery in decades.See video here.
Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based company is known, is hiring rigs that can drill in at least 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) of water, Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli said in an interview last week. The world has 21 such vessels, according to Rigzone.com, which tracks the offshore drilling industry.
The company's ``insatiable'' demand is forcing producers including Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc to pay more as they compete for the remaining units, said Kjell Erik Eilertsen and Truls Olsen, analysts at Fearnley Fonds AS in Oslo. Explorers that don't have rigs under contract may delay projects or pay rents of more than $600,000 a day.
``The oil majors have their backs against the wall as Petrobras has aggressively locked up significant rig capacity,'' said Omar Nokta, head of maritime research at Dahlman Rose & Co. in New York.
Petrobras is negotiating for as many as 17 more vessels to probe the Tupi discovery and neighboring fields, said Bill Herbert, an analyst at Simmons & Co. International in Houston. The company already controls almost seven times as much capacity as the next biggest user of rigs that can drill in 7,500 feet of water, according to research by Dahlman Rose. ...
Petrobras is in talks with Transocean Inc., the world's biggest offshore driller, to extend leases as much as three years ahead of expiration, Robert Long, chief executive officer for the Houston-based contractor, said last week.
PETROBAS EXPRESSES CONFIDENCE INTIAL DEEPWATER FINDS ARE ONLY TIP OF THE ICEBERG
ReplyDeleteThis space has stated the significance of ultra-deepwater, deep-drilling, and the obvious relation to abiotic oil principles, not withstanding dismissals of desk jockeys like Mathew Simmons, who, after hearing initial reports of ultra-deepwater oil finds, scoffed at its potential to be a "game changer."
Where is Mathew Simmons now?
Petrobas obviously disagrees, because they are going "all in" on deepwater, subsalt, oil exploration, putting their "money where there mouth is."
A bold move, is an understatement for locking up 80% of deepwater rigs available.
Geological evidence of extensive deepwater fields with giant and possibly super-giant deposits would seem to be the reason Brazil's Petrobas has pushed "grandfather's gold watch" into the game.
Announcements of Brazils oil finds have been trumpeted beyond the oil industry, into the general public consciousness. And why not? At 33 billion barrels, corioca field is the third largest find ever.
But details are a closely guarded secret: What exploration principles guided these discoveries? Discoveries that seemingly go against all traditional concepts and constraints of "fossil" theory, but dovetail so nicely with abiotic theory.
"You'll have to kill me first."
Don't expect any revelations form geologists in the know; surely, they have been sworn to secrecy. Although, almost from the first jubilant announcement of Brazil's oil finds last November, reports surfaced of industrial espionage, where technical details of the finds were stolen.
Such is the desire to know the secret protocols that led to these discoveries.
Does it not also suggest that these closely held protocols were so desired by competitors and rivals because they "jump beyond" existing knowledge available in the geological and exploratory community?
People only steal what they don't already have.
What knowledge could go beyond what was already accessible?
Answer: Abiotic protocols that publically are toxic, but secretly are craved.
Brazil's Petrobas has pushed all its chips out onto the table.
The stakes couldn't be higher.
Mystery swirls, and a theory that is publically damned, may turn out to be The Da Vinci Code of the oil age.
BRAZIL: THE SAUDI ARABIA OF THE AMERICAS?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if Brazil's Petrobas continues to find oil at the pace they currently are setting, and possibly will increase with their contracted "fleet" of ultra-deepwater, deep-drilling rigs, Brazil will be the Saudi Arabia of the Americas.
This massive amount of exploration should be sending shock waves into the oil industry as a whole.
Nowhere in the world is there this much activity and future activity.
The sun is shining on the coast of Brazil.