Petrobras Showcases New Campos Projects

During the Brazil Offshore Conference, held in Macae from June 19 to 22, Petrobras showcased the actions that will be undertaken at the Campos Basin in the upcoming years. These actions include new field exploration and the deployment of new technologies that help increase well useful life and production.

Mature field revitalization was the theme presented by Carlos Eugenio Melro da Silva Resurreicao, the general manager for the Campos Basin. To the manager, "production is on the rise in the Campos Basin. Production is expected to top at 1,700,000 barrels per day by 2010, when new field development will be added to the mature field revitalization projects." "We are applying new technologies, new work approaches, breaking away from old paradigms, and seeking new techniques and technologies to revitalize these fields," he said.

Carlos Eugenio stated that the additional production at the fields, if the work on the so-called mature fields were not undertaken, would be 300,000 bpd in 2020, and 450,000 bpd, in 2015. "New discoveries result in new fields, such as Marlim Leste, Jubarte, Cachalote and Papa Terra. The challenge is to put them into production, something that will make a significant contribution to oil production in the upcoming years."

To recover mature fields, E&P created the Program to Revitalize Fields with High Degrees of Explotation (Recage). The Procap-3000, meanwhile, was created to make production viable at large oil fields that are being discovered in ultra-deep waters. Parallelly to these initiatives, Petrobras has invested in searching for new fields near installed production structures. The goal is to make maximum use of a few of our units and invest in major discoveries via exploration concessions acquired in the National Petroleum Agency (NPA) bids.

Investments in technology

The Geologist Horacio Antonio Folly Lugon Operational Control Center, inaugurated Wednesday (06/20), is part of the investments made in production-optimization technologies. Located at Petrobras' office in Macae (RJ), the OCC will allow simultaneous integration and supervision of the operations taking place in all Campos Basin platforms. "This boosts operating efficiency, operating and productive process integration, and proactive troubleshooting," said Carlos Eugenio.

New projects

Roncador Field's production manager, Eduardo Bordieri, presented Petrobras' Exploration & Production projects. Bordieri mentioned the early operations at the Campos Basin, in 1977, when daily production was 10,000 barrels. It now reaches 1.5 million. He detailed some ten major projects, which are expected to cost about $1 billion each and produce 100,000 to 180,000 barrels per day. These projects include two new platforms going online in the second half of the year, the P-52 platform - baptized last week in the presence of the president of the Republic, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and of minister Dilma Roussef, in Angra dos Reis (RJ) - and the P-54 platform, each capable of producing 180,000 barrels per day. "The Campos Basin will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2007. We expect it, the biggest sedimentary basin in Brazil, to have excellent performance in the upcoming years," he emphasized.

Tribute

Petrobras' engineer Marcos Assayag was honored by the Brazilian Oil Institute (BOI) and by the Oil Engineer Society (OES), and international agency, during the opening ceremony of the Brazil Offshore Conference for having been awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award for Individuals during the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) last May, in the USA. Assayag was acknowledged for the huge contribution he made to the development of deepwater exploration technologies.