Petrobras Plans Output Start at Maromba Field in 2012

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Dow Jones Newswires

MACAE, Brazil, Jun 01, 2007 (Dow Jones Newswires)

Brazil's state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), or Petrobras, plans to start output at its Maromba field in 2012, a company official said Thursday.

Petrobras had declared the field in the BC-20 block in the Campos Basin off the state of Rio de Janeiro commercially viable in late December.

"It's closeness to the Papa-Terra field makes production there extremely promising," Lincoln Weinhardt, communications manager at the Campos Basin unit, said in a briefing in Macae, Rio de Janeiro state, for Dow Jones Newswires, on the Campos Basin.

U.S. oil firm Chevron Corp. (CVX) has a participation in both the Maromba and the Papa-Terra fields.

Petrobras has earlier said it plans to start production at the Papa-Terra field in 2010. The field has estimated oil reserves of 700 million barrels.

Weinhardt didn't have an exact reserves estimate for the Maromba field. When declaring it commercially viable together with seven other fields in the Campos Basin in December, Petrobras said it estimated the eight new fields combined have "recoverable volumes" of about 1.37 billion barrels of oil equivalent, or BOE.

After the Papa-Terra and the Maromba field, Petrobras plans to start production at the Caratai and Carapicu fields in the nearby BC-30 block in the Campos Basin, Weinhardt added. He could, however, not give an exact date for their likely production start. The two fields also were among those declared commercially viable in December.

The Campos Basin is Brazil's biggest oil producing region, with an average daily oil production of about 1.5 million barrels a day.

Out of an exploration and production investment of $41 billion from 2007 to 2011, Petrobras plans to spend $25 billion in the Campos Basin alone, Weinhardt said.

Copyright (c) 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.


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