Brazilian oil giant Petrobras has unveiled an ambitious multi-billion dollar game plan that calls for the deployment this decade of up to a dozen new floating production, storage and offloading vessels to develop its massive pre-salt resources in the prolific Santos basin.

According to documents obtained by Upstream, Phase 4 of the pre-salt development strategy will see Petrobras contracting a quartet of large FPSOs for the giant Buzios field.

Also on the list is one floater each for the Atapu, Lula, Sepia and Sururu fields, one each for the Sagitario and Araucaria discoveries and one each also for the Aram and Tres Marias areas where drilling has yet to take place.

Besides the 12 new units, Petrobras suggested it intends to renew the charter of the Pioneiro de Libra FPSO, which is presently carrying out extended well tests in the Mero pre-salt field.

The idea is to keep the floater producing in Mero from a single well for an additional seven years, with the new contract starting in March 2024.

The new FPSOs to be contracted by Petrobras will add installed capacity of about 2.1 million barrels per day of oil and 113 million cubic metres per day of natural gas, entering operations between 2025 and 2028.

Buzios will be the star of Phase 4, with investments in the field gaining momentum after Petrobras and a pair of Chinese companies late last year acquired the rights to produce surplus volumes from the field, unofficially estimated to hold more than 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent in recoverable reserves.

Petrobras already has four floaters operating in Buzios, with a fifth unit — the Almirante Barroso FPSO — due to produce first oil in 2022.

It has plans to launch tenders later this quarter for the Buzios-6, Buzios-7 and Buzios-8 units.

The Phase 4 plan features the contracting of the Buzios-9, Buzios-10, Buzios-11 and Buzios-12 FPSOs, with each unit being able to produce 225,000 bpd and 12 MMcmd.

The four units would become the largest floaters operating in Brazilian waters. Petrobras has tentatively scheduled them to produce first oil between November 2025 and November 2027.

As reported by Upstream earlier this month, Petrobras awarded France’s Doris Engineering a major contract to carry out front-end engineering and design studies for Buzios-9.

“The idea is that Petrobras uses the basic engineering to be provided by Doris for Buzios-9 and replicates it for the forthcoming floaters in the field,” a well-informed source told Upstream.

On top of the Buzios units, Petrobras is also looking at deploying a smaller FPSO with capacity to handle 120,000 bpd to produce from the southern tip of the giant Lula field, where the company entered a unitisation agreement with federal pre-salt entity PPSA.

The state-controlled player already has nine FPSOs producing over 1 million bpd in Lula and a tenth unit — the P-71 — is earmarked to start operations in 2022.

Also on the cards are more units to develop the Atapu and Sepia pre-salt fields.

Petrobras last month started production at Atapu with the P-70 FPSO and will begin output in Sepia next year with the Carioca FPSO.

The second floaters meant for Atapu and Sepia will be identical in size, featuring topsides modules able to handle 180,000 bpd and 6 MMcmd, with both due to enter operation in 2026.

Petrobras also plans to install a floater with capacity for 100,000 bpd at the Sururu field in 2027.

The company intends first to link a satellite well from the field to the P-68 FPSO, which started output last November at the adjacent Berbigao field.

Further down the line, Petrobras is already making advanced plans to produce from areas where it has yet to file their declarations of commerciality.

These include floaters with processing capacities of 180,000 bpd and 10 MMcmd to produce from the Sagitario discovery in Block BM-S-50 and the Araucaria find in the high-profile Uirapuru production sharing contract. Both units are earmarked to enter operation in 2027.

Petrobras last year drilled a successful well to appraise Sagitario but had a series of technical difficulties with the Araucaria programme.

Petrobras eventually notified market regulator ANP that it detected traces of oil in Araucaria in March, but unlike previous discoveries in the Santos basin pre-salt fairway, the company refrained from making additional comments.

The Uirapuru area is located immediately to the north of the Equinor-operated Bacalhau pre-salt field, due on stream in 2024. Araucaria was drilled in the southern section of Uirapuru.

The last two planned FPSOs for which Petrobras submitted environmental studies to federal regulator Ibama are for the Aram and Tres Marias areas.

Petrobras secured the two PSCs in recent bid rounds and, even though the oil company is making a more generic approach by saying it will require floaters with capacity for 150,000 bpd and 10 MMcmd to begin output in 2028, it has yet to drill in either Aram or Tres Marias.

While it may appear unusual to have start dates for areas where no exploration work has so far taken place, Petrobras last year launched a programme that aims to shorten to a mere 1000 days the interval between discovery and first oil from a deep-water field.

The PROD1000 initiative would see Petrobras rely on standardisation of equipment and digital transformation to reduce construction cycle of an FPSO.

In order to achieve maximum production flow rates from the 12 FPSOs to be contracted, Petrobras expects to drill and complete a total of 183 development wells, including 105 oil producers, 18 injectors and 60 water-alternating-gas injectors.

“Produced gas will be used to fuel the FPSOs and the rest will be re-injected or exported through pipelines,” Petrobras said.

Brazil produced 2.765 million bpd in May, with nearly two thirds, or 1.745 million bpd, coming from the Santos basin pre-salt province, according to the ANP.

Field Development

Petrobras to unleash flood of Santos basin floaters in Phase 4 pre-salt plan off Brazil