Khebab - I've been doing a bit of frantic reading around this and a couple of points. The first is that in their official press release Petrobras refer to an area called Tupi that may conatin this amount of oil. It does not seem to be a single pool.

And when they say they hope to produce at 100,000 bpd by 2010 or 2011 - this is a very optimistic time line, but not impossible since this will be produced from a floating production system. These are often used to conduct extended well tests - and so it is possible they are thinking of using exisiting equipment to conduct long tests on a small number of wells - this would provide a lot of valuable information on reservoir volume, connectivity and performance. They can add more production later by adding more ships.

Some other points. This is in 1500 to 3000 m of water. I think Petrobras currently operate up to 1000 m - so this is pushing the envelope into new engineering territory. But Petrobras are word leaders at doing this.

They also say this is light oil - at 28 API this is not light but intermediate crude. It is lighter I believe than the other oil they produce.

2006 Brazil produced 1.8 mmbpd and consumed 2.1 mmbpd -so this should help them atain and maintain self sufficiency.