Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) plans to invest US$2.135 billion in exploration and production of energy resources in Mozambique and Brazil over the next four years, said the chairman of the Indian group.

This investment in the two countries is twice the amount the group spent in the last 10 years on exploration and production activities and is less than half the total US$5.75 billion earmarked for investment over the next four year.

S. Varadarajan, the group’s chairman, said on the sidelines of a press conference last Thursday in Mumbai that the investment had been planned so that assets in Mozambique and Brazil could enter the production phase at the end of the 2019 financial year.

“These two assets, in Mozambique and Brazil, are where most of the planned investments will be channelled,” said D. Rajkumar, the CEO of subsidiary Bharat PetroResources Ltd (BPRL), according to the Wall Street Journal.

This company, which is 100-percent owned by BPCL group has a 20 percent stake in an oil block operated by Petrobras in Brazil in partnership with Videocon Industries Ltd., also of India.

In Mozambique it owns 10 percent of the Area 1 block, operated by US group Anadarko Petroleum, where large deposits of natural gas have been discovered. (macauhub/BR/MZ)