Rio de Janeiro, Apr 4 (IANS/EFE): Oil production in Brazil averaged 2.017 million barrels per day in February, down 8.5 percent from the same month of 2012, when output totaled 2.205 million bpd, the National Petroleum Agency, or ANP, said.

Compared with January's 2.054 million bpd, oil production declined by 1.8 percent, the ANP said.

The regulator said the fall in production was due to maintenance work on existing oil platforms.

State-controlled Petrobras accounted for 93.1 percent of Brazilian crude output in February, or 1.864 million bpd.

The next largest producers were the Brazilian subsidiaries of Norway's Statoil (75,124 bpd), Royal Dutch Shell (50,208 bpd) and Britain's BP (13,134 bpd), followed by private Brazilian operator OGX (10,977 bpd).

An average of 283,100 bpd (14 percent) came from the pre-salt region, which comprises a series of recently discovered, ultra-deep fields off the coasts of the southeastern states of Espirito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santa Catarina.

That highly promising frontier is so-named named because its oil fields are located under water, rocks and a shifting layer of salt at depths of up to 7,000 meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Brazil's most productive field in February was Petrobras-operated Marlim Sul (334,200 bpd), which is located in the Campos Basin.

The South American giant's natural gas production in February, meanwhile, climbed 14.1 percent from the same month of 2012 - and 0.9 percent from January - to a record 76.5 million cubic meters per day.