MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New Petrobras rig with 135.000 bpd potential

Petrobras began operating this week a new oil rig with an estimated initial daily production of 15.000 barrels of heavy oil, 17 degrees API in the Jubarte field off Espirito Santo state, according to a release from the corporation.

The P-34 platform went online via the horizontal Jubarte-4 well, which kicked Phase 1 of the Jubarte field. Three other wells will contribute to help P-34 reach its nominal 60.000 bpd capacity in the next few months. Well ESS-110, P-34's second, is slated to go online in the coming weeks. When the platform reaches its peak production level, the Espírito Santo Business Unit (UN-ES) is expected to reach a volume of 135.000 bpd. In November, Petrobras' average oil and gas production in Brazil and abroad topped 2,321,513 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day, a 2.4% production increase compared to the same month a year ago, although stable over October 2006. Petrobras' exclusive production in Brazil in November was 1,813,952 bpd, equivalent to October's volume. Natural gas production in the Brazilian fields was 43,734,000 cubic meters a day. Oil and natural gas volume, in barrel equivalents (BOE), from the eight countries where Petrobras has production assets, reached 232.485 bpd in November. The company's exclusive oil production overseas was 128.662 bpd.