Petróleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) reported that its chartered platform vessel Sepetiba had reached its peak production.
The floating production, storage and offloading vessel Sepetiba has achieved production of 180,000 barrels of oil per day in the Mero field in the pre-salt layer of the Santos Basin, Petrobras said in a press release. The milestone was achieved within the estimated timeframe of eight months as the facility’s oil processing and gas compression systems operated quickly and the well in the Mero Basin was well productive, the company said.
The subsea tie-in process also helped Sepetiba achieve peak production, with 100 percent of wells tied in advance, about five months ahead of contracted milestones. Petrobras said its engineers reduced the time of activity by 18 percent, accelerating the FPSO’s incremental increase in oil production.
The FPSO Sepetiba was chartered by SBM Offshore and was commissioned on December 31, 2023. The platform is located about 180 kilometers off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and is anchored at a depth of 2,000 meters. According to SBM, it has a storage capacity of 1.4 million barrels of oil.
The FPSO is equipped with innovative technologies aimed at increasing efficiency and decarbonising activities such as CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage), which involves injecting carbon dioxide-rich gas back into the reservoir, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, the press release said.
Petrobras said the Mero field now exceeds production of 410,000 bpd of oil. Mero is a unified field operated by Petrobras with a 38.6 percent stake, while TotalEnergies and Shell each hold 19.3 percent. The other partners are China National Petroleum Corp. and China National Offshore Oil Corp., each with a 9.65 percent stake, and PPSA (3.5 percent). Mero is Brazil’s third-largest oil field by the amount of oil it contains, only Tupi and Búzios, also located in the pre-saline Santos Basin, ahead of them.
In February, Petrobras announced that the FPSO Marechal Duque de Caxias, chartered by MISC, was en route to the Mero field in the pre-saline layer of the Santos Basin offshore Brazil.
The platform will begin operations in September and will be capable of producing up to 180,000 bpd of oil and compressing up to 12 million cubic meters of gas per day, the company said in an earlier press release. The facility will be part of Mero’s third production system and includes connecting 15 wells to the facility, eight oil producers and seven water and gas injectors via subsea infrastructure.
The FPSO platform will be connected to HISEP equipment, which separates oil and gas on the seabed and injects the carbon dioxide-rich gas back into the system. HISEP is a technology patented by Petrobras that has the potential to increase production and reduce the load on the above-ground gas processing plant while reducing the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions.
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