Brazil's giant new oilfield field could boost the country's reserves by 40 percent, Brazil-based media reported Friday, as the country celebrates the prospect of becoming a major oil exporter.

Called Tupi after one of the country's indigenous languages, the new find would be about double the size of the Ekofisk oilfield discovered off Norway in 1969. The find helped transform the Norwegian economy with hydrocarbon sales to the United States and Europe.

Early reports from Brazil of up to 8 billion barrels of equivalent, mostly light oil, signal a find for Petrobras and BG a third the size of the Shtokman gas field in the Russian Barents Sea.

Norway's deepwater supply chain now hopes to capitalize. According to E24.no, a Norwegian news site. More than in Murmansk, Norwegian suppliers are clustered between Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico for access to the area's deepwater.

"According to what we now now, the reserves are as big as half StatoilHydro's total reserves," E24.com reported First Securities analyst Martin Moelsaeter as saying.

The Financial Times said Tupi oil could equal all of Norway's remaining oil reserves. Scandoil.com recently ran the gauntlet of oil seminars in Norway, where belief in finding "elephants" had been downgraded to the hope of finding "hippos".

In contrast, Brazil is relatively unexplored, and one mamuth field augers well for future new finds of others.

ws@scandoil.com

Tags: Petrobras, Tupi field