Seventh Búzios Field FPSO reaches Brazil

Petrobras has received the seventh FPSO to operate at the ultradeepwater Búzios Field in the presalt Santos Basin offshore Brazil.

The P-78, which left the Benoi shipyard in Singapore on July 13, will be connected to the wells for the Búzios 6 project. It has an oil production capacity of 180,000 bbl/d and is also designed to compress 7.2 MMcm/d of gas.

Its hull was built at shipyards in Yantai and Hayang, China, and at Ulsan, South Korea, where the blocks were integrated. The FPSO was then transported to a shipyard in Singapore. There, the topside modules built at the Seatrium Angra dos Reis Shipyard (ex-Brasfels) and in China and Singapore were integrated and commissioned.

The Búzios Field is in water depths of up to 2,100 m, 180 km from the coast of Rio de Janeiro State. Búzios 6 comprises six new production wells, two of which can be converted to injectors; six water alternating gas (WAG) injectors; and one gas injector.

The FPSO unit will be interconnected with rigid gas production, injection and export pipelines and flexible pipelines for the service and gas lift lines.

Petrobras said that by transporting the platform with the crew already onboard, production should start about two weeks earlier than the conventional approach of making a stopover in sheltered waters.

Moving the FPSO manned, the company added, enables complex systems to remain operational, supporting the continuity of commissioning activities and teams training on those systems.

Following arrival, the process of anchoring and connection of the platform to the producing wells should last about two months.

The other six platforms presently operating over the field are the FPSOs P-74, P-75, P-76, P-77, Almirante Barroso and Almirante Tamandaré.

Production from Búzios is now above 900,000 bbl/d of oil, said Sylvia Anjos, Petrobras’ director of exploration and production.