saturated diving in Brazil
Trident Energy recently concluded its first saturation diving campaign in Brazil. The campaign was meant to remove two valves allowing additional integrity tasks to be carried out and bring a greater overall result in terms of subsea integrity and potential return to production (RTP). Trident deployed DSV Skandi Achiever as support vessel while SISTAC provided the saturation divers. The campaign had a duration of 20 days during which 28 successful saturation dives took place resulting in 150 hours of diving time.
bacalhau is delayed
Equinor has postponed to 2025 the commencement of production in Bacalhau field, Santos Basin pre-salt. According to the company’s president, Anders Opedal, the covid pandemic affected the project schedule as it did in the oil & gas industry as a whole. The Norwegian oil company is trying to mitigate the effects on its project portfolio. Bacalhau is an offshore oil field operated by Equinor (40%) in partnership with ExxonMobil (40%) and Petrogal (20%). Pré-Sal Petróleo S.A (PPSA) also participates in the consortium as manager of the sharing contract. Equinor started the drilling campaign in late 2022 with the drillship West Saturn.
more rigs, more drilling
Brazil sets new record
ANP (National Petroleum Agency) revealed earlier this week that Brazil has set a production record for both oil and gas in 2022. The country produced 3,012 million barrels of oil and 138 million cubic meters of gas per day. ANP´s director, Rodolfo Saboia, expects that these figures shall rise once again in 2023 due to increased number of exploratory blocs under contract and the expansion of exploratory activities in Brazil.
Petrobras issued this week another tender to hire up to 4 more drilling rigs. The opportunity is composed of 3 batches and bidders are allowed to offer the same unit in more than one of them. Duration of the contract will be of 3 years, with operations expected to start within 2024. All rigs chartered in this process will operate under Petrobras’ pool regime, meaning they can be redirected to any Petrobras project and not engaged in a specific field or campaign. Due to the unavailability of rigs in the country, all offers will most likely come from abroad which, combined with a global heated market, could mean daily rates at levels we have not seen in roughly 10 years.
