Petrobras announced on Friday the start of oil and natural gas production at the Lula North deep-water project in Brazil's Santos Basin.
According to the company's statement, Petrobras, together with its partners of the BM-S-11 consortium, including Shell, and Portugal's Galp, started producing oil and gas through the P-67 floating production and storage offloading vessel (FPSO) located approximately 260 km off Rio de Janeiro's state coast.
'With a capacity to process up to 150 thousand barrels of oil and compress up to 6 million cubic meters of natural gas per day, this is the ninth unit set up in the BM-S-11 block, in line with the company's Strategic Plan,' the press release read.
The FPSO will produce through nine production wells at a water depth of 2,130 meters.
The Lula consortium is operated by Petrobras with a 65 percent interest, while Shell has a 25 percent, and Galp, through its subsidiary Petrogal Brasil, holds the remaining 10 percent interest.
According to the statement, the Lula field, covering the Lula and Cernambi reservoirs, is currently the largest producing field in the country and is expected to achieve a daily production of 1 million barrels of oil in 2019, in less than a decade since the beginning of its commercial production in October 2010.
The field was discovered in 2006 and accounts for 30 percent of the country's oil and gas production.
By Hale Turkes
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr