Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) plans to increase net production from its offshore presalt formation in the Campos and Santos basins to more than 2 million bo/d by 2020, from 311,000 b/d of oil as of Apr. 17, according to Carlos Tadeu de Costa Fraga, the company’s presalt executive manager. Fraga spoke May 7 to attendees of the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.
The company estimates 1 million b/d of presalt oil production by 2017. Petrobras’ presalt production currently makes up 7% of its total output. This will increase to 42% in 2017 and 50% by 2020, according to Petrobras projections.
To reach these production levels, Petrobras will add 24 production units (floating production, storage, and offloading vessels) by 2020. Each will have 150,000 b/d processing capacity. The first will be deployed on the Lula field this month, with deployment of an FPSO to the Norte Parque de Baleias field to follow in November. Petrobras will deploy an FPSO to Iracema Sul in November 2014, producing 150,000 b/d from 8 wells, with a similarly scaled unit deployed to Iracema Norte in December 2015.
Additional development of the Lula field will begin in January 2016, according to Fraga, when and FPSO is stationed on Lula Alto. Lula Centro will receive a production vessel in March 2016, with the first of 8 units planned for deployment on Lula Sul arriving in June 2016. These 8 vessels, as well as 4 others to be deployed on Franco 1 beginning in July 2016, will be converted at Brazilian shipyards, said Fraga.
Up to this point, presalt production has been delivered through existing infrastructure, with 7 production platforms delivering from 19 wells.
Contact Christopher E. Smith at [email protected].
