Photo: José Formigli and Grace Foster during a press conference at the headquarters of Petrobras in Rio de Janeiro

Pre-salt will make a decisive contribution to Petrobras’ achievement of the targets established in its 2014-2018 Business and Management Plan. At the moment, pre-salt accounts for approximately 22% of the company’s total production of 2.1 million barrels of oil per day, but by 2018 this amount is expected to have risen to 52% of total output of 3.2 million bpd. Nineteen new production units will be installed in the pre-salt layer of Santos Basin by late 2018.

Before the end of 2014, two new platforms will come on line in the Santos Basin pre-salt: the FPSOs Cidade de Mangaratiba, in Iracema South, and Cidade de Ilhabela, in Sapinhoá North. Each of these platforms will be capable of producing up to 150,000 bpd.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, Petrobras plans to start up the FPSO Cidade de Itaguaí, which will operate in the Iracema North area, in Santos Basin, with the capacity to produce up to 150,000 bpd. Three more FPSOs are scheduled to start operating in 2016: Cidade de Maricá, in Lula Alto, Cidade de Saquarema, in Lula Central (each one with a capacity of 150,000 bpd), and Cidade de Caraguatatuba, in Lapa.

In addition, there are plans for eight “replicant” FPSOs (a set of platforms using the same engineering design), the first of which should produce its first oil in 2016 in the Lula South area. The first of the four FPSOs scheduled to operate in the “Cessão Onerosa” region is also scheduled for 2016 in the Búzios area. To complete the 19 systems planned for Santos Basin, a production system will be installed in Carcará in 2018. Through the contribution made by these projects, Petrobras expects its oil production exclusively from pre-salt areas to break through the 1 million bpd mark in 2017.