AN OVERVIEW ON CAMPOS BASIN

Exploration activities in Campos Basin offshore Brazil started in 1968 with seismic surveys carried out by Petrobras. The first oil discovery was made in 1974, 100km offshore in 126m water depth. 30 oil and gas fields have been discovered so far. The main producing reservoirs are sandstones but production is also obtained from limestones, Early Cretaceous to Miocene in age. Campos Basin production started in August 1977, through a floating production system with one single well producing 12,000 BOPD. As of December 1987, the average daily output of the basin was 367,000 BOPD. Campos Basin proved reserves at the end of 1987, using 500m (1,640ft) as water depth cut off, reached 1.6 billion barrels of oil and 39.5 billion cu m of natural gas (1.4 Tcf). Deep water discoveries as from 1984 are expected to increase the total reserves to 7 billion barrels of oil and over 100 billion cu m of natural gas (3.5 Tcf). Floating Production Systems with subsea completions are being widely used as the main technique for petroleum recovery from small and medium size fields in Campos Basin. 19 of those systems were installed, redeployed or discontinued, arriving to the current configuration of 12 systems and more than 100 subsea completions, 5 of which in waters deeper than 380m. Future plans comprise the development by steps of the giant Albacora and Marlin fields, with recoverable oil reserves of at least 1.1 and 3.6 billion barrels, respectively, using floating production systems and subsea completions between 250-800m water depth.