MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Petrobras establishes new production records during March

Brazil’s government managed oil and gas corporation Petrobras established in March new production records, according to a release from the company. The average oil and gas production last month reached 2,315,276 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed), 9.5% more than a year ago and 3% above last month’s mark.

Domestic fields’ oil production was also a record with 1,991,934 barrels/day, which is 10.6% higher than the same month a year ago, and 2.7% more than the 1,940,412 barrels/day extracted in February 2009.

The 52,000-barrel-a-day difference in oil production took place in the Campos Basin and derived from wells going online and from increased production at platforms P-53 and FPSO Cidade de Niterói (Marlim Leste) and P-54 (Roncador). More precisely the daily production record was broken on March 19, when 2,042,559 barrels were extracted.

Considering the fields in Brazil and abroad, Petrobras total oil and natural gas production last March reached an average 2,537,873 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day. This was 8.5% more than in March 2008, and 4.3% higher than the total volume extracted in the first month of this year from Petrobras’ fields in Brazil and abroad.

Oil and gas extraction from the nine countries where Petrobras has production assets, in barrels of oil equivalent, topped-out at 222,597 boed, 1.9% less than the volume produced in the previous month, and 1% below the March 2008 production.

The international variation occurred on account of factors such as new well drilling rescheduling and intervention services carried out for the existing wells in Venezuela.

Gas production in domestic fields rose to 51.407 million cubic meters per day, slightly above the 48.867 million cubic meters per day produced in February 2009.

The natural gas production abroad was 16.378 million cubic meters per day, 2.8% less than a month earlier, and 5.7% lower than in March 2008. Factors such as lower production in Bolivia, because of less demand for gas, contributed to this result.