MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Petrobras reveals Libra field achieves a breakeven price of US$ 35/bbl

The Libra consortium aimed to reduce the breakeven price by focusing on cost optimization and increased recovery factor of the block’s deposits.

Brazil's oil and gas company Petrobras shared innovations and efficiency gains related to the Libra field at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston. Petrobras revealed collaboration between Libra area partners has produced a US$13/bbl reduction to the project's breakeven price.

 The Libra consortium aimed to reduce the breakeven price by focusing on cost optimization and increased recovery factor of the block’s deposits. These actions are part of the ”Libra@35” project, which seeks to achieve a breakeven price of US$35/bbl.

Petrobras states that the consortium has achieved a 460-day reduction in the appraisal phase, representing earnings of US$360 million. The result was possible, Petrobras says, due to optimization in information acquisition during the exploration and appraisal phase.

Another initiative was the use of a simplified design for intelligent completion -- a technique to track the performance of remotely-controlled wells -- with gains of 7-18 days in this activity. In addition, the use of WAG loop, an innovative concept that allows two water/gas injector wells in a loop to be connected, enabled the reduced use of flexible lines, with savings of US$300 million.

Finally, the consortium plans to have supplying companies in the Libra 4 project involved from the project design phase, to reduce the investment in equipment and installation of subsea systems by 30%. Petrobras estimates projected savings from this initiative to be approximately US$400 million.

The Libra consortium includes Petrobras (operator with 40%), Shell (20%), Total (20%), CNPC (10%) and CNOOC (10%). Pré-Sal Petróleo (PPSA) is the manager of the production sharing contract.