Brazilian oil giant Petrobras increased domestic oil and gas production in September compared to its output in August.
Petrobras informed on Wednesday that its total oil and natural gas production in September was 2.79 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed), with 2.68 million boed produced in Brazil and 106 thousand boed produced abroad.
The average oil production in the country was 2.17 million barrels per day (bpd), 2.8% above the volume of August. This result is due mainly to operations getting back to normal, after the scheduled stoppage of FPSO Cidade de Itaguaí and FPSO Cidade de Maricá, both operating in the Lula field, in Santos Basin pre-salt.
The natural gas production in Brazil, excluding the liquefied volume, was 81.5 million m³/d, 2.0% above the previous month. This increase was also due to the operation of the platforms, mentioned above, returning to normal. It is important to emphasize that the utilization rate of the gas produced in the platforms operated by Petrobras achieved, for the second consecutive month, a new monthly record, reaching the mark of 97.0%.
Pre-salt production
In September, the oil and natural gas production operated by Petrobras (wholly-owned and partner shares) in the pre-salt layer was 1.68 million boed, a volume 6.6% above than the previous month. This result is also due to the operation of FPSO Cidade de Itaguaí and FPSO Cidade de Maricá returning to normal.
Oil and gas production abroad
In September, oil production in overseas fields was 64 thousand bpd, 3.3% above the volume produced in the previous month. This increase was a consequence of the production in the producing fields in the USA returning to normal, after the passage of the Hurricane Harvey.
The natural gas production was 7.2 million m³/d, 6.9% below the volume produced in August 2017. This performance resulted mainly due the reduction of production of the Hadrian South field due to operational occurrences.