Brazil's Petrobras Goes for the Gold

In the investing world, little is certain beyond the fact that energy stocks are usually a wise place to park money, as global demand is consistently outstripping production.

Smart money should be taking a serious look at Brazil, which under former President Lula da Silva got its financial house in order, and over the last four years has made a number of offshore oil finds in the southern Atlantic in Brazil's Exclusive Economic Zone that last week led Francisco Nepomuceno Filho, Petrobras London head of exploration and production, to comment during an interview, "Brazil as a whole could have a potential of the same size of the North Sea, including Norway and the U.K." Britain and Norway's North Sea reserves were eventually estimated at about 62 billion barrels prior to their development.

Nepomuceno's comments should not be taken lightly, as Petroleo Brasileiro S.A., more familiarly known as Petrobras, is Brazil's most important energy conglomerate, the world's 20th largest energy concern and the country's largest company.

Nepomuceno was addressing the issue of Petrobras discovering yet another offshore field, Lula/Cernambi, which is estimated to contain an eye-watering 7 -11 billion barrels of recoverable crude, leading the deposit to be labeled the one of the Western Hemisphere's biggest oil discovery in the last three decades.

Now, the bad news - Lula/Cernambi's reserves lie more than three miles beneath the south Atlantic's waters, and are covered…