Discovered in 2006 and still in the early stages of exploration, the reservoir beneath a 7,217-foot crust of salt contains anywhere from 50 billion barrels to 100 billion barrels of proven reserves.

"With the development of the pre-salt reservoir, we believe Brazil will gain its place among the top 10 oil producers in the world. We have already even been formally invited to join OPEC," said Haroldo Lima, the director general of the federal National Oil Agency (ANP in Portuguese), BBC reports.

But the pre-salt reserves are located under 7,210 feet of water, compared with BP's Deepwater Horizon rig at 4,920 feet of water.

Prior to the discovery of the pre-salt reserves, the deepest level from which Petrobras had extracted oil was about 5,905 feet, the French newspaper Le Monde reports.

"At that depth, with such high pressure, we cannot claim to be ready for any eventuality," Segen Estefen, the head of a university laboratory that works with Petrobras told the newspaper.

Even with its experience as the largest producer of oil in deep-water provinces in the world, Petrobras' exploration of the pre-salt fields poses risks and challenges: The pipes need to be reinforced because of the underwater pressure; the sediment over the salt is unstable, making it difficult to anchor the oil rigs; and the high carbon dioxide content of the fields causes corrosion, so nickel-enriched alloys become necessary.

"We are talking about a complex and aggressive environment: There's salt, there's corrosion, extreme pressures, weather can change, waves of 33 feet can appear from nowhere. ... There's no engineering solution that could be 100 percent safe," said Claudio Sampaio, architect for the naval engineering department at the University of Sao Paulo.

In its role as oil industry regulator, however, Brazil's ANP is known for keeping a close watch on operators.

ANP's Lima referred to the Gulf of Mexico accident as a "general alert" to all countries with deep-water exploration off their coasts.

"Is it possible to drill in such challenging conditions with the confidence that everything is going to work fine? That's a very important question that we had to ask ourselves after the accident in the Gulf of Mexico," he said.

But Petrobras told parliament in May that in the event of a accident on the most remote offshore fields, its rescue teams were prepared to intervene within eight hours, Le Monde reports.

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