(Bloomberg) – Equinor ASA says it may quickly begin producing at a big deepwater oil subject off the coast of Brazil after struggling delays at a mission that’s essential for its progress technique.
The $8 billion Bacalhau mission, the most important new growth in its marketing strategy, was initially scheduled to begin in 2024. Equinor will begin with one properly throughout the commissioning course of — when technicians and engineers check and activate the tools — and extra wells are scheduled to return on line within the months forward, the corporate mentioned Friday in a response to emailed questions from Bloomberg Information.
The delays to the preliminary startup on the Bacalhau oil subject, located off the coast of São Paulo, underscore the technological challenges oil producers face when creating tasks greater than 1,000 ft underwater. It’s additionally a velocity bump for Equinor’s progress technique.
Bacalhau is anticipated to supply as a lot as 220,000 bpd. It was one of many first property Brazil’s state oil firm, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, offered when it started divesting a few of its oil fields a decade in the past, underscoring how Bacalhau is much more complicated than different tasks in Brazil’s so-called pre-salt area.
“Extremely-deep reservoirs, excessive stress, and full fuel reinjection have stretched prices and mission timelines,” mentioned Andre Fagundes, a vice chairman at vitality consultancy Welligence who covers Brazil. “As first oil approaches, Bacalhau stays a defining check of Equinor’s skill to ship complicated pre-salt tasks at scale.”
Equinor started a program to drill a complete of 19 wells at Bacalhau in 2022. Chief Monetary Officer Torgrim Reitan mentioned in an earnings name on July 23 that the mission was “going in keeping with plan” and that Equinor would have “a handful of wells producing by year-end.”
The elevated ranges of reservoir stress on the subject make it technically complicated. Equinor mentioned it requires high-pressure compressors to have the ability to reinject the fuel, and that it’s going to flare from the primary properly till it has examined tools wanted to inject the gasoline again into the reservoir.
Bacalhau is the primary mission within the pre-salt area that’s been developed by a international oil firm. The floating manufacturing and storage vessel, often known as an FPSO, arrived at Bacalhau in late February.
It has taken Equinor longer to achieve first oil on the FPSO in contrast with comparable vessels operated by state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA. Petrobras, because the Rio de Janeiro-based producer is understood, reached first oil on the Alexandre de Gusmão FPSO in Could, solely three months after it had arrived on the subject.
