On Tuesday December 31, 2013 the P-61 left the BrasFels shipyard in the Angra dos Reis bay (RJ) where the unit was built and assembled.
The unit will make a technical stop for diesel and water near Ilha Grande and continue on until its final location, the Papa-Terra field in the Campos Basin. The journey will take about six days after leaving the shipyard.
This is the first TLWP platform (Tension Leg Wellhead Platform) to be built and operated in Brazil. The P-61 will operate together with the P-63 FPSO unit (producing, storing and offloading oil) which started oil production in Papa-Terra on November 11. Together, the units have the capacity to produce 140,000 barrels of oil per day from the 18 wells they are connected to.
All the P-61 production will be transferred to the P-63 to process, store and offload extracted oil to shuttle tankers. The P-63 can also compress 1 million m3/d of natural gas and the excess gas consumed on the platforms will be injected into the reservoir.
The Papa-Terra field, operated by Petrobras (62.5%) in partnership with Chevron (37.5%), is located 110 km off the Brazilian coast, in depths of water between 400 and 1,400 meters.
Technology
The combination of oil reservoirs with an API gravity ranging between 14 and 17, and being in deep water, makes developing the Papa-Terra field one of the most complex projects ever conceived by Petrobras, requiring several innovative solutions to be incorporated, including the P-61 itself.
The TLWP model resembles a semisubmersible (SS), except that it uses vertical tendons to anchor it instead of the standard mooring lines.
This technology means that the platform has a lower range of motion, allowing dry Christmas trees (well control valves), deployed on the deck of TLWP, rather than on the seabed, which is the case with SSs and FPSOs. The reason for using this alternative is to make it easier to intervene in the wells by using submerged centrifugal pumps.
Construction
Like the P-63, the P-61 is one of the new units in the production projects scheduled this year in the Petrobras 2013-2017 Business and Management Plan (BMP).
The deck and four modules were built in Singapore, Asia – two that drive and control the submerged centrifugal pump (SCP) of the wells, one to distribute electricity and control the platform and accommodation. They were brought to the BrasFels Shipyard, in Angra dos Reis (RJ), where BrasFels built the hull and was responsible for joining them and integrating various parts.
At peak construction, the P-61 generated 2,450 direct jobs and 7,350 indirect jobs. Local content of its services reached 65%.
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Petrobras, January 3, 2014