The Campos Basin will be the main focus of this year and the next within Petrobras’ exploratory program. In all, the company plans to drill 20 new wells between 2021 and 2022 in Brazil, 11 of which will be inside Campos, in the so-called “pre-salt fringe”. The move could result in a boost in the coming years in production in the basin, which has been undergoing a natural decline over time. The oil company is also preparing new drillings in the Santos Basin pre-salt, as well as wells in the Espírito Santo basin and the Equatorial Margin. The information was detailed by Petrobras’ director of exploration and production, Fernando Borges, during the presentation of the oil company’s results.
“In 2021 and 2022, in this search for new deposits to maintain or increase the company’s production, we will have around 20 exploratory wells planned. There will be 11 in the Campos Basin, many of them on that fringe outside the pre-salt polygon, where we are currently drilling two wells,” said Borges. “In this period, we will have six exploratory wells in the pre-salt in the Santos Basin and two other wells in the Espírito Santo Basin, which are also aimed at deposits below the salt layer,” added the executive.
Fernando Borges also said that Petrobras intends to drill up to two new wells in the so-called Equatorial Margin, which comprises the Potiguar, Barreirinhas, Pará-Maranhão and Foz do Amazonas basins. The activity in this area, however, still depends on the issuance of environmental licenses. “We see Guyana and Suriname having tremendous success in oil exploration. And we have blocks 30 km from the border with Guyana, 160 km from the coast, between 2,000 and 3,000 meters of water depth. But we are still waiting for the environmental license to search for [oil] in what is the last exploratory frontier for Petrobras”, he said.
The director also recalled that the oil company’s strategic planning for the period between 2022 and 2025 foresees a total of up to eight wells on the Equatorial Margin. To reach this number, however, the results of the first two wells need to confirm, in fact, the expected potential for blocks in this region. “We have foreseen in our business plan an investment of US$ 1 billion for the Equatorial Margin, contemplating up to eight wells. We still do not have licenses for Barreirinhas, Pará-Maranhão and Foz do Amazonas. We have already obtained a license to drill Pitu, which is a deep-water discovery in Rio Grande do Norte, in the Potiguar Basin”, informed Borges.
Source: PetroNoticias
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