MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Petrobras expands production and to east Africa.

Brazil's federal energy company Petrobras added this week another 100,000 barrels of oil per day to its output capacity following the beginning of production of “FPSO Marlim Sul” (floating, production, storage and offloading) in the Marlim Sul site, belonging to the Campos Bay basin in the Rio de Janeiro coastal area.

An official Petrobras release indicates the "FPSO-Marlim Sul" unit, chartered from the American engineering company Single Buoy Moorings, SBM, can store 1,6 million barrels of petroleum, compress 2,3 million m3 of gas per day, and inject 125 thousand barrels of water per day.

The start of operations at the FPSO Marlim Sul is the beginning of the complementary Module 1 Additional System which includes five wells in production, four water re-injector wells and submarine gas pipelines.

The system, 110 kilometers offshore Rio do Janeiro and operating at 1,160 meters depth is expected to begin producing 25,000 barrels per day and should peak in the second half of 2004.

The Marlim Sul field was discovered in 1987 and has 57 producing wells that reached an average output of 151,000 barrels per day in 2003.

Campos basin is the most productive of Brazil and total output averaged 1,2 million barrels per day of oil and natural gas in the first four months of this year, equivalent to 80% of domestic production.

Petrobras plans to increase total oil production by 49% to 2/3 million barrels per day by 2010 and is aggressively expanding and investing.

The Brazilian federal energy company also announced the signing of an agreement with the government of Tanzania for the exploitation of Block 5 of the Mafia Bay which covers 9,250 Km2 in water 300 to 3 thousand meters deep.

Petrobras was awarded Block 5 in the first licencing round by the Tanzanian government in 2001 and negotiations have just concluded.

The agreement involves an initial period of four years during which seismic data will be reprocessed and further exploration undertaken. Petrobras has the option of extending the agreement for another four year period, and after that another 3 years, conditioned to the drilling an exploratory well during each of those periods. If conditions are favourable Petrobras can accelerate the process.

This way Petrobras that possess leading technology in deep and ultra deep water exploration and exploitation and is present in the African west coast, Nigeria and Angola, now is expanding to East Africa.