Petrobras produces the first oil of Tupi
Petrobras kicked-off oil production in the Santos Basin’s Pre-Salt Pole today, May 1. The first oil was lifted from Tupi in the presence of Mines & Energy minister, Edison Lobão, of Petrobras’ president and CEO, of the entire board of the Company, and of representatives of the partners in the exploratory block, BG and Galp Energia. During the morning, in two helicopters, the executives visited the FPSO BW Cidade de São Vicente platform vessel, where an oil sample was extracted from the pre-salt region. In the afternoon, at Marina da Glória, in Rio de Janeiro, the oil sample was delivered solemnly to the president of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The two ceremonies, the first on the platform and the second at Marina da Glória, marked the beginning of the development of the biggest oil field ever discovered by Petrobras in Brazil, if the expectations are confirmed. Tupi holds a recoverable volume estimated between 5 and 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (oil and gas).
FPSO BW Cidade de São Vicente, which will operate in the Extended Well Test (EWT) for Tupi, is capable of processing 30,000 barrels of oil per day and will be anchored in ultra-deep waters (2,140 meters from the water line).
The Tupi EWT was started today and, for 15 months, it will collect technical information for the development of the reservoirs the Company discovered in the Santos Basin. This information will be decisive not only to define the development model to be used in the Tupi area, but also the one that will be used for the other pre-salt accumulations located in that sedimentary basin which, together, represent one of the biggest discoveries the oil industry has ever made.
With the beginning of the Tupi EWT, Petrobras inaugurates the development of a new exploratory frontier, constituted of oil reservoirs in microbial-type carbonatic rocks located at a depth of some 5,000 meters from the seabed and 2,000 meters from the waterline. This is an unprecedented technological challenge, not only for requiring the construction of wells that will cut through approximately 2,000 meters of salt, but also reservoirs formed by rocks that are still not very well known in the industry. Additionally, these are fields located at great distances from the coast. This will require a new, complex logistics model not only to transport people and equipment, but to store and offload production.
