Brazil’s national oil company is exploring the prospect of exporting liquefied natural gas from its giant offshore fields as demand for the fuel surges in Asia and elsewhere.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA Chief Executive Officer Magda Chambriard said the company has been in talks with Singapore-based shipbuilder Seatrium Ltd. about ways to liquefy and export gas from deepwater basins in the Atlantic.
“We see room to export gas through LNG vessels,” Chambriard said during a joint news briefing Thursday in Singapore with Seatrium.
The effort comes as nations in Asia and elsewhere are pushing to find new sources of LNG beyond Qatar, which has been largely blocked from exporting the fuel during the Iran war.
Chambriard didn’t provide a timeline for when Petrobras might start exporting LNG or say how much the company would invest in the effort. It would need to build a facility to liquefy the gas first.
Brazil is one of South America’s biggest producers of natural gas, thanks to ultra-deepwater oil and gas reservoirs beneath a thick layer of salt off the nation’s Atlantic coast. But rather than being sold, much of its gas is re-injected into oil wells to increase crude production.
“We export a lot of crude oil for the Asia-Pacific — It is our first destiny,” Chambriard said. “When we look forward, we see that maybe it will be the first destiny for gas as well.”