Petrobras starts 150K barrels-per-day platform in pre-salt field

Feb. 21 (UPI) -- Petrobras has started oil and natural gas production in an offshore, pre-salt area through a platform named P-76, which has capacity to process 150,000 barrels per day of crude.

"It is the second platform to start up in 2019, out of a total of four planned for this year, in line with Petrobras' strategic plan," the company said.

The platform is located 112 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. The Buzios field, in the pre-salt of the Santos Basin, was discovered in 2010.

The platform, which can also compress up to 6 million cubic meters of natural gas, is known in the industry as a FPSO, for floating, production, storage and offloading unit of oil and gas. The field is located at a depth of about 6,700 feet.

The project provides for its interconnection to 10 producing wells and seven injector wells. The offload of oil production will be made by relief vessels, while gas production will be drained through the pre-salt pipeline routes.

The pre-salt discoveries are among the most important made in the world over the last decade. Oil production by Petrobras just within Brazil will expand to 2.3 million barrels this year from 2.1 million barrels in 2018.

The pre-salt formations resulted from the breakup of Gondwana, an ancient continent where eastern Brazil and western Africa were attached.