Petrobras chief: Declining oil prices won't halt Brazil's pre-salt exploitation

Special Report:Global Financial Crisis

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 5 (Chinese media) -- The president of state-owned energy

giant Petrobras said Friday that current oil prices won't halt investments in

the development of Brazil's pre-salt layer oilfields.

Crude oil prices plunged to a four-year low of about 40 U.S. dollars per

barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"The banks and the press get very concerned about the minimum price of oil

to make the pre-salt layer fields exploitation profitable. That is not the

problem for us," Jose Sergio Gabriellisaid.

Gabrielli said Petrobras is building a new production model to make

production less expensive.

Currently, each production system costs 6 to 8 billion U.S. dollars,

including equipments such as platforms and gas processing units.

Considering Brazil's huge pre-salt oil reserves, the investment needed to

tap the potential energy will be very high.

Still, Gabrielli showed confidence in Petrobras' growth, saying that the

company expects production to increase 7.7 percent per year, not counting the

exploitation of the pre-salt layer oil fields.

Brazil's current reserves amount to about 14 billion barrels of oil

equivalent. The pre-salt layer oil reserves are estimated at 9.5 to 14 billion

barrels of oil equivalent.

"We can have an organic growth and jump from 2.3 or 2.4 million barrels per

year to 4.1 million barrels per year by 2015, not counting the pre-salt. That is

practically half of Russia's production," he said.