The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

[Update: The Brasilian press is reporting wide criticism to Haroldo Lima who at the moment is denying he announced the find: “I haven't announced anything, nor did I used that word [anoucement] at any moment.” (hat tip Carolus Obscurus).]

Reuters reported yesterday:

Haroldo Lima told reporters the find, known as Carioca, could contain 33 billion barrels of oil equivalent, five times the recent giant Tupi discovery. That would further boost Brazil's prospects as an important world oil province and the source of new crude in the Americas.

"It could be the world's biggest discovery in the past 30 years, and the world's third-biggest currently active field," Lima, head of the government's oil and fuel market regulator, told reporters at an industry event in Rio de Janeiro.

On the morning of November 12th a friend called me saying that the largest oil field in the world had just been found off Brasil. I then explained to him what the largest oil field in the world was like, and how implausible that information was. In fact since the late hours of the previous day the media was reporting “the largest world oil find in the last 20 years". Once again our energy problems were over, goodbye 90 dollar oil and so on. Déja vu? Didn't this all happen last year with the Jack field in the Gulf of Mexico?

Finding it easier to add new reserves on Wall Street than from E&P in the ground, Anadarko bought both Kerr-McGee and Western Gas on Friday, June 23rd in a $21 Billion Deal in the Oil Patch -- from the Houston Chronicle.

In an unexpectedly bold move Friday, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. announced it would purchase not one but two oil and gas companies for a combined $21.2 billion, in a ringing endorsement of U.S. energy exploration....

It's buying Kerr-McGee, a storied energy company out of Oklahoma City that is heavily entrenched in the Gulf of Mexico's deep waters and the Rocky Mountains, and the smaller Western Gas Resources of Denver, which also has significant reserves in the Rockies.

The double deal had some analysts doing a double take.

This analyst was also a bit stunned and a little investigation turned up a number of interesting things. Let's check this deal out.