Even before last week’s announcement of what looks like a massive discovery of oil deep below the ocean floor off the south-east coast of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, was known to be a lucky man. Blessed with the most benign global conditions in living memory – abundant liquidity, high commodity prices – he has made himself the most popular president in Brazil’s history by doing not very much at all. (Credit where it’s due, though: sticking to the previous government’s tight monetary policies has taken guts and determination.) Now another helping of good fortune has landed in his lap.

True, the new oil is about as inaccessible as it could be - below 2,000 metres of seawater and another 4,000 metres of rock, trapped behind a thick layer of salt that presents tremendous operational headaches. Getting it out will be costly, and efforts to do so are only in the earliest stages. Nevertheless, there is every chance that over the coming decade Brazil will start leaping up the world table of oil-producing countries. Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan leader busily spreading his oil-fuelled Bolivarian revolution across Latin America, put a brave face on it, calling on Lula to join him in forming a new “Petroamazonia” (never mind that the oil is thousands of miles from the Amazon).