Misschien ten overvloede, maar hierbij het hele artikel:
A Petrobras-led consortium will issue a tender for a chartered floating production, storage and offloading unit for the Libra field in June or July with the intention of deploying a pilot production system on the giant pre-salt asset in Brazil’s Santos basin.
The tender for the first full scale production system on the Libra field is ready to go, and will be used very soon after Petrobras unveils its new business plan, according to Anelise Quintao Lara, the state-controlled company’s executive manager for the Libra asset.
The pilot FOSI will offer production capacity for up to 150,000 barrels per day of crude and 12 million cubic metres per day of natural gas,
Petrobras is expected to unveil its new business plan, including all capital expenditure provisions, within the next 30 days, after which the tender will hit the streets.
Lara said it will be issued in line with local content requirements governing Libra's production sharing contract, but acknowledged that some adjustments would be made to adapt the project to current circumstances in Brazil.
Twenty three domestic contractors are currently barred from participating in Petrobras tenders due to their alleged involvement in the kickback scheme that was uncovered at Petrobras.
“Obviously some account will have to be taken of the fact that a number of contractors are barred from proceedings but the future charter company will have to take the necessary steps to meet the requiriements,” Lara said.
The Petrobras manager confirmed that the charter companies would be freed of the formal requirement to work with a local partner. “This requirement will not longer be there, and is unlikely to be there for the forseeable future,” she told Upstream on the sidelines of one of the OTC events.
The pilot FPSO project is designed to gather information on areas such as flow assurance, helping optimise the future production system. A 20-year charter is expected.
The first unit is expected to start production by the end of the decade but should herald orders for another 11 FPSOs, representing first-phase of development for Libra.
Petrobras is partnered on Libra by Shell, Total, China National Offshore Oil Corporation and China National Petroleum Corporation.
The consortium is also in the process of tendering for a package of basic engineering, covering design work on the overall field development layout for the entire Libra area.
The engineering contract is expected to offer a three-year term, renewable for three years more, and will probably pave the way for front-end engineering and design studies.
A smaller FPSO was contracted last September for Libra to a consortium formed by Odebrecht Oil & Gas (OOG) and Teekay Offshore.
That floater — to be converted from the Navion Norvegia shuttle tanker in Singapore at Jurong Shipyard — will be able to produce 50,000 barrels per day of oil and 4 million cubic metres per day of gas, and will run a number of extended well tests in several accumulations on the field.
For each of these tests, Petrobras will link two wells to the FPSO, comprising one oil producer and one gas injector. The plan is to evaluate the production performance of each accumulation and acquire more information about the Libra area as a whole.
The FPSO is expected to start operations for Petrobras at Libra in late 2016 or early 2017 on an eight-year charter, renewable for four more years.
Petrobras has so far drilled a total of three wells at Libra. The appraisal programme is due to continue soon with a pair of Seadrill drillships chartered exclusively for the job.
Petrobras intends to drill at least four more appraisal wells at Libra using the Seadrill rigs West Tellus and West Carina by 2017.
Libra is estimated to hold between 8 billion and 12 billion barrels of recoverable resources.