ExxonMobil will drill soon a second well at BM-S-22 block

by  Brian Baskin      Dow Jones Newswires      Thursday, March 05, 2009

NEW YORK (Dow Jones Newswires), Mar. 5, 2009 ExxonMobil will "shortly commence operations" on a second well at a recently announced oil discovery offshore Brazil, Senior Vice President Mark Albers said Thursday. Exxon said it had found traces of oil in a well drilled in the BM-S-22 block in Brazil's Santos Basin. The find was reported in a Feb. 17 filing with Brazil's National Petroleum Agency, but not released to the public until this week. Exxon has a 40% stake in the block, with Hess Corp. owning a 40% share and Brazil's state-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA holding the rest. The BM-S-22 block was the last to be drilled in a promising region that could hold deposits of up to 33 billion barrels of oil equivalent, or BOE, government officials have said. The block is part of a cluster of four blocks that contain a gigantic geographical structure, which industry experts and analysts believe could contain several discoveries the size of Petrobras' Tupi find. The structure crosses the BM-S-8, BM-S-9, BM-S-21 and BM-S-22 blocks. Albers was speaking at the company's annual presentation to analysts at the New York Stock Exchange.   (Jeff Fick in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.) Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.