From left: Paulo Dyrceu Pinheiro, Ambassador of Brazil; Ildo Sauer, Jose Gabrielli Azevedo and Demarco Epifanio during a press conference at Sheraton Doha yesterday. (Shaival Dalal)

Doha • The Brazilian national oil company, Petrobras, is looking for cooperation with Qatar in the energy sphere as well as supply of natural gas for the country's power plants.

Petrobras President, Dr Jose Sergio Gabrielli Azevedo, who is on a visit to Doha for talks with Qatari officials told a news conference yesterday that Brazil was seeking flexible supply of natural gas for hydro-power plants during the dry season when it could be used.

He said that the company was also keen to jointly develop with Qatar new opportunities for a South Atlantic type of market during the down season for LNG market too.

"The idea is to combine and optimise the different flows in the Northern hemisphere with the Southern hemisphere because they have different pick seasons," he said.

"We hope that we can reach some agreement in future. Right now we will have the initial talks about those matters."

Azevedo said that Petrobras has already leased a vessel from Norway to be used as a floating re-gasification unit in addition to two gas terminals currently being built in Brazil, one in Rio De Janeiro with a capacity of 14 million cubic feet per day and the other in Sierra state in North East of Brazil with six million cubic feet per day.

"We came for talks with Qatari government authorities and Qatar Petroleum officials and show our interest in joint projects for energy exploration in Qatar, Brazil and in third countries," he said.

He added that Petrobras would explore cooperation opportunities with Qatari companies in the energy sector in a wide range of fields including in upstream exploration, refining, in petrochemicals, fertilizers and power generation.

Ildo Luis Sauer, Petrobras Director for Gas and Energy, said that Brazil was pretty much a hydro-electric country where 85 per cent of the power comes from the hydro-electric power generation.

However, with seasonal rains from November to May and a dry season from May to October which requires natural gas for power generation Brazil has a seasonal type of demand for natural gas, he said.

"What we are seeing is an opportunity for new markets on the off-season- from May through to November- so all joint opportunities could be assessed and we are looking forward to have further discussions with Qatari companies to develop such opportunities," he said.

"LNG being a commodity that has a flexible possibility of having arbitrage between the Northern hemisphere markets and the Southern hemisphere especially in Brazil for power production brings in new opportunities to explore."

He pointed out that Petrobras with extra-territorial activities in the East and West coast of Africa, West coast of Africa in Europe and Asia and South and North America is also open for joint ventures operations in Brazil, outside Brazil and third countries.

He said that among the portfolios of energy demand for LNG is fast growing in Brazil. However, Brazil is self sufficient right now in oil supply with a total production of around 2.3 million barrels a day and by 2010 it is going to be producing 3.5 million barrels per day and by 2015, 4.5 million barrels per day coming mainly from offshore deep water.