Brazil Petrobras cranks up long-delayed rig
Date: 18-Dec-01
Country: BRAZIL
The company said in a statement the 150,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) rig in the oil-rich Campos basin would be producing 50,000 bpd at the end of the week, and output would rise to 100,000 after the first two months of operation.
It should be working at full capacity by mid-2002.
Petrobras - so far Brazil's only oil producer - has said the company should miss its year-end output target by about 4 percent due to delays in obtaining environmental licenses for the new rig.
Petrobras had already been forced to revise down its 2001 average production target to 1.39 million bpd from 1.42 million bpd after its biggest oil rig sank in March.
The output should now total about 1.35 million bpd for the year, still well above last year's 1.27 million.
The P-40 oil production rig and the P-38 storage platform, received in January, had been initially due to start working by mid-year.
The sunken P-36 had a capacity to produce 180,000 bpd but had been extracting about 80,000 bpd. The platform sank after a series of explosions that killed 11 crew members.
Brazil is Latin America's third-largest oil producer but is a net importer. It hopes to achieve self-sufficiency in oil by 2005.