The Almirante Barroso floating production, storage and offloading vessel has produced first oil for Petrobras at the giant Buzios pre-salt field offshore Brazil.
The unit is the fifth of 11 FPSOs planned to be installed at Buzios, estimated to hold 11.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent in recoverable resources, by the end of the decade.
Supplied by Japanese floater specialist Modec, the Almirante Barroso FPSO features topsides modules with processing capacity of 150,000 barrels per day of oil and 6 million cubic metres per day of natural gas.
The Almirante Barroso FPSO was installed in 1900 metres of water and has storage room for 1.4 million barrels of crude.
Buzios is producing approximately 560,000 bpd via the P-74, P-75, P-76 and P-77 FPSOs, which represent about 17% of the country’s output.
“Buzios summarises how representative the pre-salt layer is for Petrobras’ production, in addition to being important for the country’s energy security,” said Petrobras chief executive Jean Paul Prates.
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“By 2025, when the Almirante Barroso FPSO will be close to plateau and we will have other units entering operation, the field’s production should reach close to the 700,000 bpd mark.”
Petrobras operates Buzios with an 88.99% stake and is partnered by Chinese companies China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) on 7.34% and China National Oil & Gas Exploration & Development Corporation (CNODC) on 3.67%.
“Buzios-5 is the first project to commence production after CNOOC joined the Buzios project, which will inject new momentum into our overseas production growth,” said CNOOC president Xia Qinglong.
Besides the Almirante Barroso, Petrobras has already contracted six other FPSOs to be installed at the Santos basin pre-salt development by 2027.
These include the P-78 (Buzios-6), Almirante Tamandare (Buzios-7), P-79 (Buzios-8), P-80 (Buzios-9), P-82 (Buzios-10) and P-83 (Buzios-11).
Petrobras expects Buzios to be producing about 2 million bpd by the time the 11th FPSO enters operations in the field and reach maximum capacity.