Brazil’s secrets of big oil discoveries stolen

Executives at Halliburton, the US oil industry services company, and Petrobras, the Brazilian state oil group, will be called to give evidence to Brazilian police this week following the theft of computer equipment containing secret information on recent discoveries of potentially enormous oil and natural gas deposits.

Police have discarded initial suspicions that last week’s theft was an ordinary robbery that happened to pick up sensitive information, and are regarding it as industrial espionage.
The information is understood to include technical details of two recent discoveries of oil and gas deposits in Brazilian fields known as Tupi and Jupiter. The Tupi field alone is estimated to contain 5m-8m barrels of oil – a little less than the entire reserves of Norway – and may have the potential to put Brazil among the world’s biggest oil-producing countries. Both fields are under 2,000 metres of sea water and a further 4,000 metres below the sea bed.

Financial Times