Petrobras and its partners in the BM-S-9 consortium started the oil and natural gas production yesterday in the Lapa field, in the Santos Basin pre-salt layer, through the FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba.

This is the third unit to enter operation in the pre-salt this year, and the 11th largest definitive system operating in this layer. In addition, Lapa is the third pre-salt field of the Santos Basin to start production, after Lula and Sapinhoá.

Located approximately 270 km from the coast of the São Paulo state, at 2,140 m water depth, this Floating Production Storage Offloading Unit has the capacity to process daily 100 thousand barrels of oil and compress 5 million m3 of gas, and is interconnected to the Lapa field through production well 7-LPA-1D.

Expressive results in the pre-salt

Production start-up in the Lapa field takes place at a time of expressive results in the pre-salt layer. Oil production operated by Petrobras at this frontier already exceeds 1.2 million barrels per day and, in November, we reached the historical mark of 1 billion barrels of oil produced in the pre-salt layer. This achievement was possible upon start-up of ten large production systems in only six years. They are: Lula Pilot (FPSO Cidade de Angra dos Reis), Sapinhoá Pilot (FPSO Cidade de São Paulo), Lula Nordeste Pilot (FPSO Cidade de Paraty), Lula/Iracema Sul Area (FPSO Cidade de Mangaratiba), Sapinhoá Norte (FPSO Cidade de Ilhabela), Lula/Iracema Norte Area (FPSO Cidade de Itaguaí), Lula Alto (FPSO Cidade de Maricá), Lula Central (FPSO Cidade de Saquarema), as well as FPSO Cidade de Anchieta and P-58, both in Parque das Baleias. The pre-salt wells that were interconnected to already existing production systems in the Campos Basin also contributed to this record.

The Lapa field is located at the BM-S-9 concession, operated by Petrobras (45%), in partnership with BG E&P Brasil – a subsidiary company of Royal Dutch Shell plc (30%) – and Repsol Sinopec Brasil (25%).