Brazil's Petrobras has experience with ultra-deep drilling in risky areas. In fact, they're slated to start an ultra-deep project in the US Gulf of Mexico.
(As a side note, one wonders if Brazil's safety practices are improved and if their upcoming project has been thoroughly vetted :eyes: )
( And as a further aside, even independently of this current catastrophe, the Gulf of Mexico and the planet's entire ecosystem are under massive attack. Needless to say, I hope offshore drilling is banned)
Brazil's Projects in the US GOM:"Petrobras remains on track to launch its biggest project ever in the U.S. in coming months, a senior official with Brazil's state-owned oil company said Friday.
Petrobras, keeping with its original timeline, is set to begin producing oil by mid-2010 from
two ultradeep- water fields in the Gulf of Mexico known as Cascade and Chinook, said Cesar Palagi, a Gulf of Mexico asset manager for the company.
“Midyear is a fair statement for what we know today and the challenge that we have ahead of us,” Palagi told reporters after a luncheon speech to the Brazil-Texas Chamber of Commerce at the Westin Galleria Houston.
The Petrobras project is being closely watched because it will be among the first to come on-stream in the emerging Lower Tertiary play, an ancient rock layer under the Gulf of Mexico some 150 miles offshore from Louisiana and Alabama, where the industry has made huge oil discoveries in recent years. It's likely to follow only Shell's multibillion-dollar Perdido project — capable of 100,000 barrels per day of oil and 200 million cubic feet per day of natural gas — which is slated to start production early this year.
For the project, Petrobras also has secured the first U.S. license to use a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessel, or FPSO, to operate in the Gulf of Mexico. The vessel, currently en route to the Gulf from Singapore, has the capacity to produce 80,000 barrels per day of oil, a mark Palagi said the project could hit within two years.
FPSOs, which are more mobile than other production platforms, typically are used in offshore areas without as much infrastructure as the Gulf, but Petrobras will tie into existing subsea pipeline networks to transport natural gas from the fields, Palagi said. The company has said using the FPSO will give it more flexibility in developing the project.
In January, Petrobras exercised an option to acquire the remaining 50 percent of the Cascade field held by Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp. The move came after Devon said last year it would sell its international and Gulf of Mexico assets to reduce debt and refocus on North American onshore gas fields. In Chinook, Petrobras has a 66.7 percent stake, while France's Total holds the remaining 33.3 percent.
Petrobras is operator of both fields and plans to develop them jointly.
Under a first phase of the project, the company will bring on line two wells in Cascade and one in Chinook. How many additional wells will be brought on in a second phase will be based on how things go in the initial phase, Palagi said,
noting challenges of operating in 8,000 feet of water and the extreme downhole temperatures and pressures in the region.
Palagi declined to disclose how muchPetrobras has invested in the project to date but said “we are very much on budget.”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/688... (HoustonChronicle.com+--+Energy)
******************************************************************
RIO DE JANEIRO -(Dow Jones)-
Brazilian state-run energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR, PETR4.BR) is on schedule with development of two fields in the Gulf of Mexico, despite calls for a halt in the wake of the ongoing environmental disaster, a company executive said late Monday.
Fernando Cunha, BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) rig exploded in late April. The well has been spewing oil since the accident, creating an oil slick that is threatening the U.S. Gulf Coast.
"We currently have a yellow light, given that President Obama has suspended for now drilling in the Gulf," Cunha said. "But our forecast was to start in August, so we're waiting on a reversal of the suspension by then."
Petrobras holds a 100% stake in the Cascade field after recently buying out former partner Devon Energy (DVN). At Chinook, Petrobras is lead operator with a 66.7% stake, while Total E&P holds the remaining 33.3%.
Until now, the disaster has had no effect on Petrobras' operations in the Gulf. The oil slick is far from Petrobras installations, Cunha said. Any changes implemented by the government in the wake of the disaster, however, will be felt throughout the industry, he added.
"It could be really bad," Cunha said of possible restrictive measures. "But it will be necessary to adapt to the new conditions imposed, and the oil industry knows how to do this."
But Cunha noted that heavy handed measures could have a chilling effect on development in the Gulf - making some projects unfeasible because of higher costs.
While Petrobras remained committed to the Gulf of Mexico, the company did plan to pull back from some overseas investments to focus on development of its discoveries in Brazil, he added.
"We're already leaving some countries," Cunha said, listing India, Senegal, Mozambique d Pakistan as areas from which the company had retreated.
Petrobras froze its international investments in its 2009-2013 strategic plan. The company, however, will reduce investments in the 2010-2014 period, he said.
The company needs all the cash it can get to develop the so-called presalt oil discoveries made off the coast of Brazil. Development of the finds is expected to be complicated and expensive because they lie in an ultra-deepwater basin.
The presalt oil discoveries were made under a thick layer of salt in the Santos Basin off the coast of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro states. The oil lies under more than 2,000 meters of water and a further 5,000 meters under sand, rock and a shifting layer of salt.
****************************
In the South Atlantic:Massive deep-water oil find in Brazil challenges technologyRIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — This country, famed for its development of sugar-cane-produced ethanol, soon could become one of the world's great oil powers — if its state-controlled energy company, Petrobras, can tap a potentially massive deposit beneath the South Atlantic Ocean.
Experts believe the deposit, in the Tupi field 180 miles off the southeastern Brazilian coast, holds up to 8 billion barrels of light oil and natural gas. If confirmed, the deposit would be the largest petroleum find in seven years and would propel Brazil to the No. 12 position in oil reserves, after the United States and ahead of Canada and Mexico.
Analysts estimate that the deposit could be worth as much as $60 billion and predict that Brazil, which last year for the first time produced as much oil as it consumed, could become a major oil exporter.
Yet the find will challenge Petrobras' reputation as one of the world's best at exploiting deep-sea oil deposits.
About 70 percent of Petrobras' oil production comes from deep-water wells, making it the world's biggest oil producer at such depths. But the Tupi deposit is deeper than Petrobras has ever drilled — under 7,000 feet of ocean water and more than 16,000 feet of rock, sand and salt, including a 1.2-mile-thick layer of rock-hard salt.
How to tap into the find has set off a technological race, spurred beause the potential rewards of exploiting the deposit are so great — especially as the price of oil nears $100 a barrel.
"It's among the most complicated projects in the world in terms of deep water," said Caio Carvalhal, a Brazil-based research associate with the U.S. consulting firm Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "But Petrobras has proved in the past that it is up to the task."
Company officials have said that years of planning lie ahead, and experts estimate that the Tupi field won't start operating fully until 2013. Although the company announced the find last year, it just released estimates of its size in November. The company will have to drill more wells to better calculate the size of the deposit
"This was the first time that we arrived at this depth, and the technology is expensive," said Guilherme Estrella, Petrobras' director of exploration and production. "The costs are elevated, but the quality of the oil brings robustness and viability to this investment."
The Tupi field is the latest landmark in a technological race to the bottom of the ocean that many say is the energy industry's future.
Already, about a third of world oil production is offshore, with as much as 15 percent coming from deep waters, said energy consultant David Llewelyn, who's worked extensively in Brazil. Some of the most promising offshore oil regions lie in the so-called Golden Triangle, made up of the Gulf of Mexico and the coasts of Brazil and western Africa.
In 2005, U.S.-based Chevron and its partners drilled the deepest offshore oil and gas well in history at 34,189 feet below sea level in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Transocean, the world's largest offshore drilling contractor, which completed the well. The deepest onshore well, at 37,016 feet, was completed earlier this year on Sakhalin Island, off the Russian coast, for ExxonMobil.Last year, Chevron announced it had found one of the biggest oil deposits in the United States, as much as 15 billion barrels of petroleum, more than 28,000 feet below sea level in the Gulf of Mexico.
"This is where the inustry has to go to make the big finds like this," said Thomas Marsh, the Houston-based vice president of the consulting group ODS-Petrodata, a world leader in offshore exploration analysis. "And a lot of money is being spent on getting the industry going where it needs to go."
Oil companies reach such ultra-deep deposits by lowering drill bits into the ocean floor through a system of pipes connected to a floating platform on the water's surface. The pipes and drills get smaller the farther into the ocean floor they penetrate. At maximum depth, they're only about 8 inches wide, which increases their chances of being damaged.
The dangers come with the intense water pressure and heat, which can damage even the hardiest of metal drills. Temperatures 30,000 feet below the ocean floor can reach 400 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to turn oil into natural gas.
The biggest technical challenge of the Tupi deposit is penetrating the solid salt layer, which can become a kind of gel that squeezes and resists the drill bit. The salt also can interfere with sound wave-based seismic imaging that engineers use to figure out what's below it.
The deposit's location far from the Brazilian coast also complicates the task of delivering an estimated 53 million cubic feet of natural gas daily to consumers in the project's pilot phase.
Because natural gas can't be stored, Petrobras might have to build an enormous gas pipeline that would stretch 180 miles to shore or install gas liquefaction facilities above the deposit to turn the natural gas into storable liquid.
Despite all the difficulties, Petrobras will rise to the challenge, said Marcio Rocha Mello, president of the Brazilian Association of Petroleum Geologists and a former head of the company's geosciences section.
Before confirming the Tupi find, Petrobras already had drilled 15 wells into the solid salt along Brazil's southeastern coast, mapping an undersea basin of oil and gas stretching about 500 miles long.
"We've already put a lot of training and resources into this," Rocha Mello said. "The technology involved is already fully understood. It's not going to be a problem."
Drilling the first well alone cost $240 million, and tapping the Tupi deposit will require investing at least $5 billion at the outset, Llewelyn said. Petrobras controls a 65 percent stake in the deposit, with British company BG Group and Portugal's Gal Energia controlling the rest.
Petrobras has made such investmets pay off in the past largely through innovation. The company pioneered the use of floating platforms to drill wells and store oil and has come up with new ways to heat and transport extracted petroleum.
The company has tried such technology in more than two dozen countries, including in the United States, and shared its know-how with countries also looking at going deep. In the process, Petrobras has lowered its costs for finding new deposits.
And unlike state energy companies in Venezuela and Mexico, Petrobras is known as one of the best-run firms in the industry.
Innovation has come with risks, however, and even tragedy. In 2001, a Petrobras rig that was then the largest in the world caught fire and sank off the Rio de Janeiro coast, killing 11 people.
Despite such setbacks and the enormous investments required, the Tupi discovery guarantees that Petrobras will be exploring the ocean floor off the Brazilian coast for years to come.
"With a find this size, the cost isn't really an issue," said energy consultant Llewellyn. "You really just have to do it."
McClatchy Newspapers 2007
**************************************************************************************
has Brazil's safety record improved since this?Brazil oil spill leaves a stain on Petrobras Date: 31-Jul-00
The state Goliath impressed investors with its oil output and bulging net profit but a series of embarrassing oil spills has tarnished Petrobras's image and raised questions about how effective the oil giant is in policing its vast network.
Just two weeks ago, a pipeline at one of Petrobras's refineries burst, spewing 1 million gallons (4 million litres) of crude into the Iguacu River in southern Brazil.
It was Petrobras's third oil accident in six months."The scariest thing about the disaster was Petrobras's complete lack of preparedness," said Teresa Urban, an environmental activist at Rede Verde who accompanied the cleanup efforts."The company showed incompetence in preventing the accident and even more incompetence in reacting quickly to clean it up despite its recent track record," she added.
In January, a ruptured pipeline at a Petrobras refinery in Rio de Janeiro's scenic Guanabara Bay oozed 350,000 gallons (1.3 million litres) of oil into the bay, killing hundreds of fish, birds and plants. Ecologists say it will take 10 years to recover from the disaster."We cannot allow a company the size of Petrobras to get away with at least two serious accidents in less than a year," Environment Minister Jose Sarney Filho said after the latest spill.
In June, a Petrobras tanker also dumped almost 100 gallons of oil into the same bay when it washed out its bilges.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=7638
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
