After departing Seatrium's Benoi shipyard in Singapore on July 13, the floating production storage and offloading unit (FPSO) P-78 arrived at the Buzios field in the pre-salt layer of the Santos Basin off Brazil on Tuesday, September 30.
The FPSO will now be connected to the wells to begin production shortly.
The Búzios field is located in ultra-deep waters of the Santos Basin at depths of up to 2,100 metres, 180 kilometres off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state.
The Búzios Six project involves 13 wells: six producers (with two convertible to injectors), six water alternating gas injectors, and one gas injector. The unit will be interlinked with rigid pipelines for production, injection, and gas export, as well as flexible pipelines for service lines and gas lift.
The FPSO is the seventh unit planned for the field and will join six other platforms currently in operation: P-74, P-75, P-76, P-77, Almirante Barroso, and Almirante Tamandaré.
P-78 has a production capacity of 180,000 barrels of oil per day, in addition to compressing 7.2 million cubic metres of gas daily.
Seatrium said transporting the unit with the crew on board allows production to begin approximately two weeks earlier than the traditional approach of stopping in sheltered waters.
The company said moving the FPSO while manned enables several complex systems to remain operational, ensuring continuity of commissioning activities and team training on these systems. This approach significantly reduces the time between the unit's arrival at the field and the start of oil production.
Following arrival and prior to entering service, anchoring operations and connection of the platform to the producing wells will be carried out, a process that Seatrium expects will take about two months.