Iran invites Brazil to join OPEC

05 September 2008

Iran has formally invited Brazil to join the 13-member oil producrts cartel – OPEC. Iran's ambassador Moshen Shaterzadeh made the formal invitation during a meeting with Brazilian energy minister Edson Lobao.

Iran, with one of the largest oil reserves in the world, is a founder-member of OPEC and can propose another country for membership.

Brazil attracted global attention last year when it announced that it had discovered the second-biggest oil find in 20 years in the Tupi basin - an area 800km (500 mile) by 200 km (125 mile) wide --- off Brazil's southern coast that analysts say may contain a massive 5 billion to 8 billion barrels of untapped light oil.

Subsequently, other finds in the Santos Basin suggest Tupi's find may be just the tip of a huge reservoir of light crude. The problem now for Brazil is to extract the oil from the Tupi basin, located seven kilometers under the waves, under a salt layer one kilometer thick.

If confirmed by tests which are underway, those finds would increase the country's proven national oil reserves, which currently stand at 14 billion barrels, and propel Brazil to the same level as OPEC members Nigeria or even Venezuela.

Petrobras, the state-owned oil company's engineers has put the Tupi find at an estimated 20 trillion dollars on an estimated reserve of more than 100 billion barrels of oil at a market price of $200 a barrel of crude.