Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4), Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, discovered “good quality” oil at its third well at the Iara field in deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean near the country’s biggest deposits.

Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based producer is known, found a reservoir with high potential at the Iara West well and plans to carry out tests to gage productivity, the company said in an e-mailed statement.

Brazil has discovered more crude than any other country over the past decade as it explores reservoirs that are trapped under miles of water, rock and salt in the so-called pre-salt region. Petrobras is investing more than any other oil company to produce the oil and build new refineries to process it into gasoline and other fuels.

BG Group Plc (BG/) and Galp Energia SGPS SA (GALP) are Petrobras’s partners at the project with 25 percent and 10 percent stakes, respectively. The three companies are also partners at Lula, Brazil’s biggest oil field.

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Millard in Rio de Janeiro at pmillard1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net