Brazil’s Libra development consortium has confirmed it has signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with Odebrecht Oil & Gas/Teekay Offshore (OOG-Teekay) for the 12-year charter of a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility for the first phase of the Libra project, as exclusively predicted here (see DI, 6 October 2014, page 1).

The OOG-Teekay duo won the tender process for the FPSO charter, which will see the floater carry out an extended well test campaign in the ultra-deepwater Libra area in the pre-salt Santos Basin. The delivery of the FPSO and the start-up of the first EWT are scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2016.

The plan is to conduct tests in several areas in order to evaluate production performance and acquire information. Based on these data, up to a dozen further definitive production systems will be later designed and installed.

For each of these EWTs, two wells will be connected to the FPSO: one oil producer and one gas injector. These tests will also be the first to use a gas reinjection system. The platform will have a processing capacity of 50,000 b/d of oil and a gas injection capacity of 4 MMcm/d. The majority of the produced gas will be reinjected into the reservoir for pressure maintenance. The FPSO will be operated by a company to be formed by Odebrecht and Teekay.

Sembcorp Marine’s subsidiary Jurong Shipyard won a US $696 million contract to convert a shuttle tanker into the FPSO vessel for the OOG-Teekay joint venture company OOGTK Libra GmbH & Co. KG. The Navion Norvegia will be converted, with the work including detailed engineering, installation and integration of topside modules, installation of external turret and power generation, accommodation upgrading as well as extensive piping and electrical cabling works. It is scheduled for completion in the third quarter of 2016.

Two wells have already been spudded on Libra, which is estimated by Brazil’s National Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANP) to hold recoverable oil and gas volumes of between 8-12 Bboe. The Libra consortium is made up of Petrobras (operator, 40%), Shell (20%), Total (20%), CNPC (10%) and CNOOC (10%), with the state company Pré-Sal Petróleo S.A. (PPSA) the manager of the contract.