Deepwater Oil

Deepwater oil discoveries have helped Brazil increase its total oil production nearly 10 times since 1980, to 2.6 million barrels a day in 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In 2007, Petrobras, the state oil company, and partners made the biggest oil find in the Western Hemisphere in 30 years. The finds have launched new industries just to accommodate the development of these resources, as Bloomberg's Peter Millard reports in this Special Report.

This photo offers a view of the helicopter deck (right) of the Petrobras P-51 semi-submersible offshore oil platform under construction at the Brasfelf shipyard in Angra dos Reis, in August 2008. The rig is designed to extract more than 180,000 barrels of oil and 6 million of cubic meters of gas per day. Petrobras has invested $830 million and employed more than 5,000 people in the exploitation of the now-declining Marlim oil field alone.

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Read the full Special Report.