Thursday, March 13, 2008
Maritime platform Petrojarl Cidade de Rio das Ostras, the first designed for extra-heavy oil production in the country, was baptised yesterday (12) by oil company Petrobras and should start operating in the third quarter of this year.
The equipment should be based in Badejo field, in Campos Basin (northern Rio de Janeiro state), with the objective of collecting information to be used in the project for development of the Siri reserves, in that field.
The unit has a capacity to process heavier and more viscous oil, 12.8 degrees API (the density measure used by the American Petroleum Institute), and it will be in water of 95 metres in depth situated 80 kilometres off the coast.
According to Petrobras, the Petrojarl production should be 15,000 barrels of oil a day, with a storage capacity up to 200,000 barrels of oil. The platform, added the state-owned company, should operate as "a laboratory for the development of other extra-heavy oil maritime fields," all in Campos Basin.
In the evaluation of researcher Giuseppe Bacoccoli, of the Engineering Post-Graduate Program at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Coppe/UFRJ), once the platform has started operating, Petrobras "may increase Brazilian oil reserves by approximately 1 billion barrels". The country currently has around 15 billion barrels of oil equivalent in reserves.
