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BRASILIA (AFP)--Iran has formally invited Brazil to join the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, but the South American nation turned down the offer, energy minister Edson Lobao said Wednesday.

"I received the ambassador of Iran, and he invited Brazil to become part of OPEC. It wasn't a suggestion but a formal invitation," he told a media conference.

But Lobao said he told ambassador Moshen Shaterzadeh in the meeting two weeks ago that Brazil - which recently discovered vast new offshore oil fields - "does not envisage that possibility" right now.

Brazil in November 2007 announced it had discovered a new oil field 250 kilometers off its coast that could contain up to eight billion barrels of oil.

Early this year, it said other nearby fields could contain another 40 billion barrels of light crude.

If confirmed by tests that are underway, those finds would multiply the country's proven national oil reserves, which currently stand at 14 billion barrels, and propel Brazil to the same level as OPEC members Nigeria or even Venezuela.

However, the technical challenges in getting to the oil, which lies seven kilometers underwater and under a problematic salt layer, mean production is years away - in 2012 at the earliest.

The cartel of OPEC is made up of 13 countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have the biggest reserves in the world.

Lobao said he hadn't spoken o... >>>