Eric Watkins
Senior Correspondent
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 5 -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva officially launched the Piranema floating production, storage, and offloading unit, chartered from Sevan Marine and anchored off the Sergipe coast.
The unit's hull was built at the Yantai-Raffles shipyard in China and then transported to the Keppel Verolme shipyard in the Netherlands, where the oil and gas production processing plant was installed.
The unit, which is capable of producing as much as 30,000 b/d of oil and storing 300,000 bbl of oil, is the world's first circular FPSO unit and will interconnect a total of six wells at maximum depths of 1,450 m.
Last month Sevan said Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) revised the schedule of start up of oil production from Piranema field to mid-September because of normal delays in the completion of operations. Petrobras signed the charter agreement with Sevan in February 2004.
Declared commercial in August 2004, Piranema field is in deep waters, 35 km off Aracaju, the capital of Sergipe state, and will produce 44º gravity oil.
Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].
