BG shares lifted by oil discovery

A huge offshore oil discovery in Brazil caused shares in UK oil and gas explorer BG to surge for the second successive session today.

BG, formerly part of British Gas, has a 25% stake in the Tupi field, which could hold as much as eight billion barrels of recoverable light crude and lead to Brazil becoming one of the world’s top ten oil producers.

State-run oil firm Petrobras, which has a 65% stake in the field, said the discovery could account for 40% of all the oil ever found in Brazil.

BG shares jumped 10% to a record 989p on Thursday, followed by another rise of 4% to 1034p today. That was despite warnings from analysts that the cost of developing the field, which is in deep water, could be expensive.

Reading-based BG has operations in 25 countries over five continents. It is active in 87 blocks in the UK North Sea, and is operator in 44 of them, including the Armada, Maria and Seymour fields in the Central North Sea and the Blake and Atlantic fields in the Outer Moray Firth.