Tuesday, May 09, 2023

FOSSIL FOOLS
Equinor and partners to spend $9 billion tapping reserves offshore Brazil


A floating production platform will be used to process the reserves located in the Campos Basin off the coast of Brazil. 
Image courtesy of Equinor


May 8 (UPI) -- Norwegian energy company Equinor said Monday it was joined by its Brazilian counterparts in making a final investment decision to tap an offshore basin with more than 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves.

Equinor was joined by Petroleo Brasileiro, better known as Petrobras, and the Brazilian subsidiary of Spanish energy company Repsol in announcing a $9 billion investment in the BM-C-33 project off Brazil.

Located in the resource-rich Campos Basin, and situated beneath a thick layer of salt at the sea floor, the three prospects that make up the project contain more than 1 billion barrels of natural gas and an ultra-light form of oil called condensate.

"BM-C-33 is one of the main projects in the country to bring new supplies of domestic gas, being a key contributor to the further development of the Brazilian gas market," said Veronica Coelho, Equinor's country manager in Brazil. "Gas exported from the project could represent 15% of the total Brazilian gas demand at start-up."

Partners will tap BM-C-33 using a floating production storage and offloading vessel that was designed to lower the environmental impact of the drilling campaign.

Equinor has long considered Brazil -- one of the largest oil and gas producers outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries -- to be among its core areas of interest. Five years ago, it estimated it would be producing as much as 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030.

Operations at BM-C-33 are expected to commence in 2028, some 18 years after the initial discovery.

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