New FPSO en route to join six other units at Petrobras’ deepwater field (Gallery)

A floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit has left Seatrium’s yard in Singapore for a field in Brazil’s Santos Basin operated by the country’s state-owned energy major Petrobras.

As disclosed by Petrobras, FPSO P-78 left Seatrium’s Benoi shipyard in Singapore on July 13 and is headed to the Búzios oil field in the pre-salt Santos Basin. Since the unit will have a crew onboard during towage to the location, production is expected to start around two weeks earlier than planned. 

According to the Brazilian giant, transportation with a crew onboard allows complex FPSO systems to be maintained in operational condition and the commissioning process to continue, reducing the total time between arrival at the final location and the start of oil production. 

The P-78 unit has a production capacity of 180,000 barrels of oil and can compress 7.2 million cubic meters of gas per day. Once first oil is achieved, scheduled for December 2025, the field’s current installed production capacity will increase by approximately 18%, to around 1.15 million barrels per day. 

After the vessel’s hull was constructed at shipyards in China’s Yantai and Hayang, China, and South Korea’s Ulsan, the FPSO was transported to the Singaporean shipyard. The topside modules, built at Brazil’s Seatrium Angra dos Reis Shipyard, formerly Brasfels, China, and Singapore, were integrated and commissioned there. 

On June 30, Petrobras’ Director of Exploration and Production, Sylvia Anjos, and Director of Engineering, Technology, and Innovation, Renata Baruzzi, visited the P-78 platform at the shipyard in Singapore. They participated in the vessel’s sailaway ceremony.

The Búzios field is located in the ultra-deep waters of the Santos Basin in water depths of up to 2,100 meters, 180 kilometers off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. Six FPSOs are already working there: P-74, P-75, P-76, P-77, Almirante Barroso, and Almirante Tamandaré.

The field was discovered in 2010 and began operating in 2018. Petrobras is the operator (88.98% interest) on behalf of the Búzios Shared Reservoir Consortium, comprising CNOOC (7.34%) and CNPC (3.67%), with Pré-Sal Petróleo S.A. (PPSA) as the manager.

The project has 13 wells: six producing wells (with two convertible to injectors), six water-alternating-gas (WAG) injectors, and one gas injector. FPSO P-78 will be interconnected with rigid pipelines for gas production, injection, and export, and flexible pipelines for service and gas lift lines.