Brazil ///
Petrobras plans to pay its shareholders $34 billion in dividends over the next five years as it cuts debt and sells assets to shore up its finances, CEO Roberto Castello Branco said.
The Itaoca Offshore project will be a private terminal (TUP), located in Itapemirim, in the Espírito Santo (ES) state in southeast Brazil, designed to provide logistical support to the supply chain for the exploration and production of offshore oil and gas.
Deepwater production has come online from the Brazilian pre-salt Santos basin. Shell Brasil and its consortium partners announced the start of oil and natural gas production at the P-68 FPSO, located in BM-S-11-A Concession in Berbigão, Sururu and West Atapu.
Petrobras CEO Roberto Castello Branco said the reason most major oil companies didn’t show up for Brazil’s massive auction was because of the astronomic price tag and regulatory uncertainties.
Brazil’s largest-ever auction of oil deposits flopped, sending the real tumbling, after state-controlled Petrobras did most of the bidding while other major oil companies stayed away.
“Whether or not we participate, it would be wrapped up in how we would see that opportunity versus all the other investment options, because there are a lot of investment options out there right now,” said Stephen Greenlee, Exxon's president of exploration.
The Saudi offer highlights Brazil’s growing importance as an oil producer as well as the challenge it poses to the producer group’s influence on crude markets.
An auction next month of oilfields in Brazil may be the priciest ever held, raising at least $50 billion in licensing fees and compensation, according to people familiar with government estimates.
According to Ecopetrol estimates, the company could incorporate about 90 MMbbl of crude oil in contingent resources from 2020, which will be gradually added to its balance of reserves.
The event, organized in conjunction with the Latin American Environmental Film Festivals, and which focuses on the causes related to sustainability, drew an audience of nearly seven thousand people.
Brazil’s efforts to uncover the origin of oil washing up on more than 130 beaches along its pristine northeastern coastline are pointing to Venezuela as the likely culprit.
Maersk Supply Service will provide an integrated mooring lines life extension solution for Shell’s FPSO Fluminense, including project management, engineering, interface management and offshore execution off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.
The Optimax deep-set safety valve protects against catastrophic loss of well control by providing fail-safe closures at pressure up to 10,000 psi and are rated for setting depths as deep as 12,000 ft.
The auction of drilling rights off the coast of Brazil planned for November, potentially offering more oil than all the proven reserves in Mexico, has attracted interest from some of the world’s largest producers.
“The pre-salt is good, but it’s not a sea of oil; there are still risks,” said Marcelo de Assis, the head of Latin American upstream research for Wood Mackenzie Ltd. “Deepwater gas is something that doesn’t work. All the developments are focusing on oil.”
SBM Offshore is participating in a competitive sealed-bid process to purchase the equity ownership in the leases and operating companies related to five Brazilian FPSOs owned by Serviços de Petróleo Constellation S.A.
Subsea UK, the International Association of Drilling Contractors Brazil chapter and Subsea World Brazil magazine have worked in partnership to develop the Subsea & Drilling Brazil conference. The first of its kind event focusing solely on the subsea and drilling industries in Brazil is set to take place from 28 – 29 November in Rio de Janeiro.
Subsea 7 today announced the award of a sizeable contract by Total E&P do Brasil for the development of the Lapa North East field, at 2,150 meters water depth in the pre-salt Santos basin.
Repsol Sinopec Brazil, Ouro Negro and the Mechanical Engineering Department of PUC-Rio’s Technical and Scientific Center (CTC/PUC-Rio) are expanding their technological partnership, developing a through tubing logging profiling tool to assess cement quality in lined wells.
MODEC informed Petrobras that cracks were identified at the hull of FPSO Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, at the Espadarte field, in the Campos Basin, 130 km off the coast of Brazil.