Petrobras has completed the previously announced sale of shares in several Brazilian fields to France’s Total for US$1.95 billion it was confirmed. The deal was announced as part of the two companies’ Strategic Alliance, signed in March 2017.
The giant Libra field in Brazil’s pre-salt zone has started producing oil, French Total said on Monday without providing details about the production rate at the field.
Brazil's Petrobras and France's Total oil companies announced on Monday a strategic alliance Monday for upstream and downstream projects as President Michel Temer pronounced Brazil's troubled economy reopened for business.
French oil company Total has started up production at the offshore Vega Pleyade gas and condensate field in the Tierra del Fuego region of Argentina. Operated by Total, the project will have a production capacity of 10 million cubic meters of gas per day (70,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d)).
Norway's Statoil giant announced on Tuesday an agreement with French Total to acquire a 15% working interest in an offshore exploration block in Uruguay's continental shelf. The announcement comes only weeks before Total is preparing to drill its first exploratory well in Uruguayan waters.
Maersk Drilling has been awarded a contract for the drillship Maersk Venturer with oil major France's Total. The contract covers one exploration well (estimated duration 120 days) in block 14 offshore Uruguay.
The Petrobras-led Libra consortium has said that the first extension well in the Libra area, known as 3-BRSA-1255-RJS (3-RJS-731), has proven the discovery of high-quality oil in the northwest portion of the structure.
French oil major Total appointed on Wednesday refining head Patrick Pouyanne as chief executive and former CEO Thierry Desmarest as non-executive chairman. The nominations at the head of the world's fourth-largest integrated oil company came less than 48 hours after the brutal death of Chairman and CEO Christophe de Margerie in a plane crash in Moscow.
Russian investigators have said criminal negligence caused the crash at a Moscow airport that resulted in the death of Total's chief executive. Christophe de Margerie died along with three crew members when his corporate jet collided with a snow plough.
Brazil's biggest oil field, Libra, will cost 80 billion dollars to develop, according to a senior executive with France's Total, one of five consortium members participating in the project. Total's vice president of exploration and production for the Americas, Ladislas Paszkiewicz, made the estimate at the Rio Oil & Gas conference, which began Monday and runs through Thursday.