Petrobras Begins FPSO Production at Buzios

Brazilian oil and gas major Petrobras has started oil production at its floating production storage and offloading unit (FPSO) at the Buzios oilfield in Brazil, the company said in a news release.

The FPSO Almirante Barroso platform can produce up to 150,000 barrels of oil and 211.89 million cubic feet (six million cubic meters) of gas daily, Petrobras said. The FPSO will contribute to the oil production of the Búzios field, which currently averages 560,000 barrels a day, or around 17 percent of national production, the company said.

The Búzios oilfield is in the Santos Basin, southeast offshore of Brazil, with an average water depth of approximately 7,218 feet (2,200 meters). It is the world's largest deep-water pre-salt producing oil field, according to the news release. It uses the traditional deepwater pre-salt development mode, which includes an FPSO and subsea facilities. FPSO Almirante Barroso is located 112 miles (180 kilometers) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and operates its production in a water depth of 6,234 feet (1,900 meters). It is the fifth platform to start operating in the Búzios field, where the P-74, P-75, P-76, and P-77 units are already in production, the company said.

Petrobras said Búzios targets to have 11 platforms. Currently, six units are under construction: FPSO Almirante Tamandaré, P-78, P-79, P-80, P-82, and P-83. Petrobras operates the shared Búzios field with an 88.99 percent stake, with China’s state-owned energy firms CNOOC and CNODC holding 7.34 percent and 3.67 percent, respectively.

"Búzios synthesizes how representative the pre-salt is for Petrobras' production, besides being important for the country's energy security”, Petrobras CEO Jean Paul Prates said. “By 2025 we will have the entry of other units and the field's production should reach close to the 700,000 barrels per day mark”.

FPSO Almirante Barroso is a unit chartered from Tokyo-based Modec, a provider of floating production solutions such as FPSOs to the offshore oil and gas industry. The FPSO is leased on a 21-year time charter contract, according to a news release from Modec. The FPSO is the 15th FPSO/FSO vessel that MODEC has delivered to the Brazilian oil and gas sector and the eighth for the pre-salt region, according to the news release.

“The FPSO Almirante Barroso MV32 was a highly complex project executed almost entirely during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company’s teams in the different countries had to adapt their ways of working to overcome unprecedented challenges to deliver this project safely”, Soichi Ide, President and CEO of MODEC Offshore Production Systems (Singapore) Pte Ltd, said.

In December 2022, CNOOC paid around $1.9 billion to Petrobras for the transfer of an additional interest in the Buzios field. CNOOC’s Brazilian arm, CNOOC Petroleum Brazil Ltda, signed an assignment agreement with Petrobras to acquire another five percent interest in Búzios TOR Surplus Volume in the first half of 2022.

Bahia Terra Resumption

In another development, Petrobras said it has received authorization to resume production at eight more facilities of its Bahia Terra oil fields from Brazil’s National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels.

Petrobras said it started the execution of operational procedures required for the safe return of the production process of these facilities. All 38 facilities that make up the Bahia Terra Pole have already been released for operation, allowing the resumption of 100 percent of total production, the company said.

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