Petrobras Produces One Billion Barrels in Pre-Salt

Petrobras celebrated the production of one billion barrels of oil in the pre-salt layer on Wednesday. The milestone was reached six years after the first production system came on stream in the Santos Basin, in the Lula field, and 10 years after the first discovery in 2006.

This performance is unparalleled in the global history of offshore oil production, says Petrobras. For example, in the American portion of the Gulf of Mexico, this milestone was reached 14 years after the beginning of commercial production, and in the North Sea it was achieved in eight years. In Brazil, the same output was only reached in the Campos Basin after 15 years of commercial production.

Ten years after the first commercial discovery in the pre-salt, it has become one of the world’s most productive oil-producing regions. The area has higher average productivity indicators than the global average for offshore fields. Some wells are lifting 25,000 barrels per day, and productivity is up 30 percent from 2010. As a result, Petrobras has been able to interconnect fewer wells per production system.

Petrobras achieved record daily production in the pre-salt, with output peaking to 1.25 million bpd on November 9.

Pre-salt oil production is very important for the company’s financial recovery, representing large-scale production of excellent quality oil for refining, for lifting costs of less than $8 per barrel. Between 2017 and 2021, another 16 large production systems will start up in the pre-salt.

Route 2 gas pipeline

Petrobras recently recorded another important result in the pre-salt. As of November 15, the Route 2 gas pipeline had transported two billion cubic meters of gas, just nine months after it started operating, in February of this year. Extending for 401 kilometers (250 miles), Route 2 is Brazil’s longest gas pipeline. It connects Petrobras’ pre-salt production systems in Santos Basin to the Cabiúnas Gas Treatment Terminal in Macaé, Rio de Janeiro. The pipeline network takes an average of 12 million cubic meters of gas to the terminal each day and accounts for 70 percent of the gas transported in the area.