Patola lies within Karoon’s 100%-owned and operated production license BM-S-40 and is adjacent to the company’s producing Bauna and Piracaba fields 200 km off the coast of Sáo Paulo.
The plan is to tie the field back to the existing Bauna floating production storage and offtake (FPSO) vessel Cidade de Itajai.
Development will include two near-vertical subsea production wells to be drilled and completed with the Maersk Developer semi-submersible rig immediately after completion of the four-well Bauna intervention program.
An integrated engineering, procurement, construction, and installation contract was let to TechnipFMC for design, manufacture, and installation of subsea infrastructure.
Of the expected US$175-195 million development cost, $17 million has already been invested to ensure long-lead items are available to meet the project timeline, the company said.
Karoon will fund remaining costs through a combination of a newly arranged US$160 million reserve-based non-recourse loan, syndicated facility agreement, and cash flows from operations.
Terms of the syndicated facility include a requirement to hedge a portion of future oil production to protect cash flows in the event of lower oil prices. Karoon anticipates that about 40% of the forecast production in the first year of the loan and 30% in the second year will be hedged.
Patola is expected to produce at an initial rate in excess of 10,000 b/d from the same reservoirs as Bauna and Piracaba fields. Production is expected in first-quarter 2023.
Patola has 2C contingent resources of 14.7 million bbl, comprising 13.2 million bbl in Patola plus another 1.5 million bbl from Bauna that will come from injection of Patola gas into the Bauna reservoir.
Together with expected production from the Bauna intervention project, Karoon expects total output from the licence to reach 30,000 b/d in early 2023, more than double the current production.
