Drill, Brazil, drill | Offshore | Oil Drilling

Brazil | Offshore | Oil Drilling

This week Brazil is poised to start selling off its “gift from God.” After billions of barrels of undersea oil were discovered off Brazil’s coast in 2007, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva credited divine providence. “God is Brazilan,” he said in a speech following the discovery, later calling the oil not only a divine gift, but his country’s “passport to the future.”

That future arrives in part on Thursday. That’s when Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, is set to announce the start of its commercial production of a small section of the Tupi field, one of several billion-barrel oil fields the company says are located offshore.

More than 200 miles out to sea and several miles below the surface, the pools of oil are thought to be among the biggest discovered on earth in recent decades. Properly tapped, they’ll make fortunes and catapult Brazil into the ranks of the world’s top oil-producing countries.

But as the crude begins to flow, some industry experts say Brazil has understated the risks involved — made apparent by the deep-sea drilling that caused this year’s disastrous spill in the Gulf of Mexico.