French-headquartered energy giant TotalEnergies has approved a final investment decision (FID) for an oil development project located in the Santos Basin, 300 km off the coast of Brazil.
TotalEnergies announced the FID for the Lapa South-West oil development project on Monday, 16 January 2023. The French player operates this project with a 45 per cent interest, in partnership with Shell (30 per cent) and Repsol Sinopec (25 per cent).
David Mendelson , Senior Vice President, Americas at TotalEnergies Exploration & Production, remarked: “This latest development is an important milestone for TotalEnergies in Brazil that will increase its operated production in the pre-salt Santos Basin, a key growth area for the company.
“With its efficient engineering approach and synergies with existing facilities, this project illustrates TotalEnergies’ strategy of focusing on low-cost, low-emissions assets.”
The Lapa South-West project will be developed through three wells, connected to an existing FPSO – located 12 km away – currently producing in the northeast part of the Lapa field since 2016. This development represents an investment of approximately $1 billion.
Lapa is a pre-salt oil and gas field in the Santos basin, which lies within the core pre-salt cluster area previously known as Carioca before its declaration of commerciality in December 2013.
Discovered in 2007, the Lapa field is situated in the BM-S-9 block, which was split into two sub-blocks following the discovery of Sapinhoá. The Lapa field’s full commercial production started in late 2016 through the 100,000 b/d FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba MV27.
The FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba MV27 has an oil processing capacity of 100,000 barrels a day, a gas processing capacity of 177 million cubic feet a day, an oil storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels and a water injection capacity of 120,000 barrels of water per day.
The production start-up at the Lapa South-West project is expected in 2025 , increasing production from the Lapa field by 25,000 barrels of oil per day , bringing the overall production to 60,000 barrels of oil per day.
Regarding TotalEnergies’ recent activities in Brazil, it is worth noting that the oil major was part of a consortium, which won the award of an offshore exploration block in December 2022, during the first cycle of Brazil’s open acreage under a production-sharing regime bid held in Rio de Janeiro.