Shell Begins Production at Parque das Conchas Offshore Brazil; Deep Water and Heavy Oil Required New Technologies
13 July 2009
Shell began production at its multi-field Parque das Conchas (BC-10) project 110 kilometers (68 miles) off Brazil’s south-east coast, where heavy oil resources lie beneath waters nearly two kilometers deep in the Campos Basin. Shell developed and deployed a number of new and advanced technologies to meet the project’s many challenges, among them water depth and oil viscosity.
Parque das Conchas is a two-phase project with initial production drawn from three fields: Abalone, Ostra and Argonauta B-West. The depth between the seabed and the top of the reservoirs can reach 2,500 meters, and the distance between fields can reach 20 km.
| “This marks a major milestone in delivering oil from Brazil’s deep water.” —Marvin Odum Shell Upstream Americas Director |
The three fields are being developed with subsea wells and manifolds, with each field tied back to a centrally located Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel moored in ~1,780m of water. Ostra, the first field to go into production, is being drilled with horizontal wells which can reach the length of 1 km inside the reservoir.
The first phase, now on-stream, involves nine producing wells and one gas injector well. The second phase will focus on the Argonauta O-North field.
Among the new technologies applied in the BC-10 project are:
Parque das Conchas is the first full-field development using subsea oil and gas separation and subsea pumping.
To avoid flaring and reduce CO2 emissions, natural gas produced with the oil will be separated and pumped back into the Ostra field until a gas export pipeline system is complete.
The water depth required weight reduction and the development of buoyant steel risers—flexible steel pipes several kilometers long that anchor the floating, production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) in place.
The field geology with its scattered formations demanded extended horizontal drilling for better production.
To keep the heavy oil (API 16-42) flowing, the FPSO, with 68 MW of power generation capacity, feeds power to the deep-water separation and high pressure pumping systems through huge electrical umbilical cables.
| The Espírito Santo. Click to enlarge. |
Electric pumps of 1,500 horsepower drive the oil 1,800 meters up to the surface for processing in the FPSO, Espírito Santo, which is more than 330 metres long. It can process 100 thousand barrels of oil and 50 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and store nearly 1.5 million barrels of oil for shipment to shore by transport tankers.
Shell Brasil Ltda., the operator of the projects, owns 50; other partners include Petrobras with 35% and ONGC Campos Ltda. with 15%. Shell has produced oil in Brazil since 2003, in the Bijupirá and Salema fields.
Congratulations on the clever work. The animals which will follow the humans on the earth would never need or want to look there for energy if nuclear or coal were available. US governmental actions that have resulted in high oil and other energy prices may make the discovery profitable. Keep up the good lobbying. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 13 July 2009 at 02:12 PM
NASA recently published a report which shows that the Martian ice caps are melting due to the sun heating up. Some would no doubt claim it's the Martians burning fossil fuels.
Posted by: Mannstein | 13 July 2009 at 04:32 PM
...and don't forget the Medieval warming period, when England last had a wine industry. I suppose it was caused by all of the Medieval SUVs back then and the burning of hemp.
Posted by: Scott | 14 July 2009 at 01:59 AM
"Deep Water and Heavy Oil..."
Oil is getting more expensive to explore and develop. We may be reaching a point in time where we need to think about our dependence on oil alone.
Posted by: SJC | 14 July 2009 at 09:11 AM