New pre‑salt oil platform can boost production by 20%
Petrobras’ P-78 floating platform arrived on Tuesday (Sep. 30) at the Búzios Field, in the pre-salt layer of the Campos basin, 180 kilometers off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The information was released by the state-owned company. The structure had departed from Singapore, in Southeast Asia, on July 13.
The vessel is a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit boasting a production capacity of 180 thousand barrels of oil, in addition to compressing 7.2 million cubic meters of gas per day.
The P-78 will be the seventh platform to produce oil in the Búzios field, which, Petrobras Director of Exploration and Production Sylvia Anjos said, “has exceeded daily production of 900 thousand barrels of oil.” Thus, the new unit will be able to increase daily production by up to 20 percent.
In addition to the P-78, the P-74, the P-75, the P-76, the P-77, the Almirante Barroso, and the Almirante Tamandaré platforms also operate in Búzios.
Transportation with crew
To start operations ahead of time, the P-78 was transported from Asia with the Brazilian crew already on board, which sped up procedures and team training. This allows production to start around two weeks earlier than planned.
The last time Petrobras adopted the practice of transporting the crew was in 1999.
The next pre-operation steps are the anchoring and interconnection of the platform with the oil wells, which should take approximately two months.
The hull of the P-78 was built in the cities of Yantai and Hayang, China, and in Ulsan, South Korea. The blocks were integrated in South Korea before being sent to Singapore, where the modules were assembled, including one built at the Seatrium (formerly Brasfels) shipyard in Angra dos Reis, on the coast of Rio de Janeiro.
Pre-salt
According to the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels (ANP), Brazil’s watchdog for the sector, pre-salt production accounts for around 80 percent of the total oil and gas produced in the country.
Discovered in 2006, pre-salt reservoirs have contributed to Brazil’s energy sovereignty, enabling the country to remain independent of oil imports. In addition to high productivity, the wells store light oil – considered to be of excellent quality and high commercial value.
The Santos basin is regarded as the cradle of the pre-salt layer. It is the area with the highest oil production. The Campos basin also holds significant reserves and was a pioneer in Brazilian oil exploration. Production in the pre-salt layer began in 2008 at the Jubarte field, located in the Campos basin, off the Brazilian southeast coast.
