Campos Basin – Where It All Starts

Campos Basin was the first discovery to feature great exploration potential and the challenge of reaching deep waters. Today, almost 40 years later, it accounts for more than 80% of the country’s oil production.

The Campos Basin was formed 100 million years ago during the breakup of the South American and African continents, which resulted in the formation of a “natural landfill” of sediments discharged into the Atlantic Ocean during this period. These sentiments decomposed under varying levels of pressure and temperature, creating subsea accumulations of oil and gas in porous rock.

The first oilfield with commercial volumes of oil—Garoupa—was discovered in 1974 at a water depth of 124 m. This was followed by the Namorado discovery, then the Enchova discovery in 1976, from which commercial production began on August 13, 1977 through an Early Production System utilizing the semi-submersible Sedco 135-D, producing 10,000 bpd.

Campos Basin area covers about 100,000 square kilometers, extending from the state of Espírito Santo, close to Vitória, to Arraial do Cabo, in the northern coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Enchova’s EPS was the first technological milestone of oil production at sea, in an effort towards deeper waters. It enabled a drop in the maturity period from 48/62 months to only four months. Improvements in terms of agility and operational flexibility were implemented, as well as great investments savings. The system provided for the set off-of oil production while fixed platforms were built to be installed later.

That period of discovery and development was a proud and important one, because it was from that point on that, later, oil extraction from deep and ultra-deep waters were made possible.

Going forward with the Campos Basin expansion process, the country’s first large, deep waters field was discovered in 1984. It was named Albacora. Later, other giant fields were identified, such as Marlim, Roncador, Barracuda and Caratinga. In addition to these, also of great size, the following were discovered in the northern part of the basin, in the state of Espírito Santo: Jubarte and Cachalote, in an area that became known as “Parque das Baleias” (Whale Park).

Campos Basin was, and still is, a massive open-air lab, where the main offshore technologies, that are groundbreaking in many ways, are tested for the development of production projects in water line depths (distance between the surface and the seabed) never tried before in the world.

Achievements in the Campos Basin led Brazil to overcome yet another challenge: to become oil self-sufficient in April 2006.

The basin currently accounts for 42% of Brazil’s total production, producing 1,373,068 boe per day (according to ANP data from February 2018).

Oil production rates in the Campos Basin will gradually decline by about 9% per year to 2021, below the industry average of 12%, according to Petrobras’s business plan.