Too crude

Using stark language yesterday, the CEO of the state-run oil giant Petrobras said Brazil is fast approaching the limit of its capacity to refine crude oil, adding that the country must boost its refineries, stat.

“It would be suicide to not invest in this area,” Petrobras President Jose Sergio Gabrielli said in a Dow Jones story. “We are already at the limit of capacity.”

Brazil has recently discovered some of the world’s largest remaining reserves of off-shore oil but, as of last year, the country was able to refine only 1.9 million barrels of oil per day. By 2020, Gabrielli said Brazil’s daily output of un-refined oil and natural gas will be the equivalent of 5.38 million barrels per day. They’d better get cracking.