Petrobras found a column of light oil 272 meters (892 feet)...

Petrobras found a column of light oil 272 meters (892 feet) thick.!!!!

Brazil Finds 4.5 Billion Barrels for Petrobras Swap (Update2)
May 12, 2010, 6:10 PM EDT

(Adds analyst comment in third paragraph.)
By Peter Millard
May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil made its second-largest deepwater oil discovery as it seeks 5 billion barrels of crude reserves to swap for shares in state-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA.
The Franco offshore well in Brazils Santos Basin, which Petrobras explored on behalf of the government, holds reserves of about 4.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil, the National Petroleum Agency said in a statement today. That compares with up to 8 billion barrels at Tupi, the largest discovery in the Americas since Mexicos Cantarell in 1976.
Petrobras, whose $220 billion investment program through 2014 is the biggest of any oil company in the world, plans to buy rights to government reserves with new stock and sell additional shares to investors before the end of July. The find will help allay concerns the government wouldnt find enough reserves to carry out the swap, said Andres Kikuchi, an analyst at Link Corretora who has an outperform rating on Petrobras.
Its important that the ANP has those numbers before they do the offer, Kikuchi said in a telephone interview from Sao Paulo.
Petrobras found a column of light oil 272 meters (892 feet) thick at Franco, making it one of the most productive wells ever drilled in the country, the oil regulator said. The well, the first drilled under the swap plan, is larger than the Iara and Guara discoveries in the pre-salt region, Petrobras said in an e-mail.
If it stays in that level, its going to be one of the bigger discoveries in the world, said Bob Fryklund, vice president of IHS CERA Upstream Research, in a telephone interview. It depends on where the final number ends up.
Cash
Petrobras may raise $15 billion to $25 billion in cash from investors in the offering, Merrill Lynch analyst Frank McGann said today in a note to clients.
The company will sell shares to investors before the end of July even if Congress doesnt approve the exchange of stock for government reserves, Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli said in an April 30 interview.
The government is not required to use the Franco discovery in the swap, a spokeswoman for the oil regulator, who cant be named due to agency policy, said in a telephone interview.
--Editors: Carlos Caminada, Bob Brennan.
To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Millard in Rio de Janeiro at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at [email protected]