Brazilian oil giant Petrobras is scheduled to announce Friday, April 21, that Brazil has reached self-sufficiency in oil, guaranteed with the entry into operation of platform P-50.
The structure will be the largest in operation in Brazil, adding over 180,000 barrels of oil to Brazilian production. Last month, Petrobras produced 1.75 million barrels of oil a day.
Thirty years ago, Brazil imported almost all the oil consumed internally. The announcement of self-sufficiency takes place on the same day as Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is going to visit the P-50 platform, installed in Albacora Leste field, in Campos Basin, on the coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
The site is the main oil producer in the country, answering to around 85% of the national oil production. A Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FSPO) unit, the new platform will alone start answering to 11% of the total oil extracted in the country.
Apart from producing oil, P-50 will have capacity for compression of six million cubic meters of natural gas and will store another 1.6 million barrels of oil. According to the concept adopted by Petrobras, self-sufficiency is the availability of oil produced at equal or greater or equal volumes to the refining capacity in the country, for the supply of the domestic market.
Today, the domestic demand for the product is around 1.8 million barrels (the same as the National Refining Park), whereas production after the start of operation of the P-50 should reach year-end at a daily average of between 1.9 million and 1.91 million barrels.
ABr
