Petrobras Fires up Cidade de Saquarema
Tuesday 12 July 2016
Petrobras has started up operations at its latest SBM Offshore-owned floating production, storage and offloading unit on the giant Lula pre-salt field in the Santos basin off Brazil.
Output from the Cidade de Saquarema started on Friday from the initial production well in the central part of the field and ramped up to a stabilised rate of 30,000 barrels per day of oil on Monday, the state giant said on Tuesday.
The floater had left the SBM joint venture Brasa shipyard in Niteroi close to Rio de Janeiro on 22 May, bound for the field some 300 kilometres offshore.
Sailaway followed a speedy turnaround time of just four months for integration of topsides modules on the vessel by SBM under an engineering, procurement and construction contract.
That compares with five months for similar integration work on the previous FPSO converted at the yard, Cidade de Marica, that came online in February, also on the Lula field.
The Cidade de Saquarema has oil-processing capacity of 150,000 bpd and gas compression capacity of 6 million cubic metres per day. Petrobras has it on a 20-year lease-and-operate contract.
The Central Lula area is in Block BM-S-11 and is operated by Petrobras on 65%, with Shell-owned BG on 25% and Petrogal on 10%. The full Central Lula development comprises 18 wells - nine producers and nine injectors.
Petrobras' next pre-salt floater to come online will be the Cidade de Caraguatatuba on the Lapa field, also in the Santos basin. It is expected to start production in the third quarter.
The Modec-owned floater, which has capacity to produce 100,000 bpd of oil and 5 million cmd of natural gas, arrived at Lapa in mid-June. Petrobras recently won approval from state regulator National Petroleum Agency (ANP) to start output, but included some restrictions during the initial production phase.