Petrobras' global quest for power
MELGAR, COLOMBIA — For most of Latin America's state oil companies, these are hardly halcyon days: Although high global prices have lifted revenue, crude oil production is either in decline or moving sideways.
Then there's Brazil's go-go Petrobras.
The company has doubled its oil output over the last decade to 2.2 million barrels a day and joined the ranks of the world's major producers. Petrobras' deep-water discoveries off Brazil's coast, such as the Tupi oil field announced in November, plus aggressive energy exploration around the world -- from the U.S. Gulf Coast to West Africa, Turkey and here in Colombia -- have captured investors' attention.
So what's the secret behind its success? Analysts say the Brazilian government's decision to open the company up to outside investors, to break its monopoly on the nation's oil fields and to push the company to develop deep-water drilling technology were critical to its growth. But the company's adventuresome spirit is also paying dividends.
Petrobras' Campo Guando oil field here in rugged Andes foothills 70 miles southwest of Bogota is a case in point. Despite daunting logistics, difficult geology and the presence of leftist rebels, Petrobras has quietly developed Campo Guando, Colombia's biggest new field since 2000.
The field's average daily production of 30,000 barrels -- just 1.4% of Petrobras' total output -- is less significant than the doggedness with which it has approached a site that a previous owner, a British company called Lasmo Oil, deemed too difficult.
"The geology was complicated, the oil was very deep, there wasn't enough water with which to re-inject the field, and at first there wasn't even a pipeline," said Nestor Aguirre, the Guando oil field's production manager. "We overcame all that."
In addition to Colombia, Petrobras has a presence in more than 25 countries. But not all of Petrobras' Colombian ventures have paid off. A $135-million crapshoot at its Tayrona Block off the Caribbean coast came up snake eyes late last year, when the deep-water exploratory well it was drilling in partnership with Exxon and the former Colombian oil monopoly called Ecopetrol turned out to be a dry hole.
"It's disappointing but a part of the business," Petrobras Colombian President Dirceu Abrahao said in an interview in Bogota, the Colombian capital. He said that it took drilling nine wells before Petrobras made its first oil discovery in Brazil's offshore Campos Basin, which is now the company's most important field.
