Brazil's state oil company announced it has discovered new natural-gas and light-oil reserves off its southeastern coast. Petroleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) provided no estimates of reserves in the new find, but said in a statement late Thursday that the discovery confirmed the “high potential” for oil and natural gas in the Espirito Santo basin. The well drilled at a depth of 708 meters from the water's surface encountered natural gas at a depth of 3,417 meters, Petrobras said. In addition to the natural gas, the well also detected light oil in shallower reservoirs, at a depth of 2,461 meters. The announcement came one month after Petrobras announced the discovery of as much as 8 billion barrels of light crude in an extremely deep field off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, an amount that could transform the country into a major world oil exporter.
