In the words of...
David Gourlay,Vice President Southern Cone (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil)
“The Southern Cone of South America is a perfect example of E&P’s strategy.
In Brazil, the stake we acquired in the Atapu and Sépia fields in mid-2022 illustrates the Company’s strategy of targeting projects with low technical costs and low GHG emissions. Sépia is an enormous pre-salt field with 2 to 3 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in reserves and resources. It offers the largest column of oil in the entire Santos Basin, as well as excellent productivity. It’s already in production, and a second production unit is scheduled to come onstream within a few years. In addition, in late 2022 we discovered an additional accumulation, smaller in size, that can be integrated into the new project we will be launching.
We’re expanding our presence in world-class assets operated by Petrobras, which has extensive experience in Brazil. Petrobras has developed an approach that reflects the nature of the local pre-salt, and we’re learning from their experience in the Santos Basin. We have a shared interest in pushing technological limits, and together we’re developing an R&D program whose findings will be applied to future projects on those blocks.
We are also the operator at Brazil’s Lapa field, which is a sizable asset from which we are gaining maximum value thanks to our operational efficiency. Current production is about 55,000 boe per day, but the FPSO has capacity of 100,000 boe per day. Our teams have pushed that field to its limits and kept the wells at peak production levels, while reducing our GHG emissions. They have surpassed all our expectations over the past two years. At the start of 2023, we gave the green light for a campaign to develop the southwestern portion of the field, so production will see a boost in 2025 when those wells are projected to come onstream.
Argentina has been a growth driver as well. In 2022 we decided to launch a new project, Fenix, in the Tierra del Fuego region that will enable us to increase our natural gas production at low technical cost and with low GHG emissions.”