Petrobras starts first oil production in pre-salt layer

A ceremony was held aboard JK (P-34), attended by Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Petrobras president and CEO José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo.

FPSO JK (P-34) has been producing oil in the Jubarte field since December 2006 in a reservoir located above the salt layer. The platform is only 2.5 km away from the 1-ESS-103A exploratory well, which discovered the oil in the pre-salt, below the Jubarte Field, 1,375 m below the water line.

In the past couple of years, Petrobras has invested approximately R$1.7 billion in drilling 15 wells that reached pre-salt layers. Eight of them have already been tested and revealed the presence of light oil and associated natural gas. They are still under assessment.

To reach the pre-salt layers, at depths of 5,000 m to 7,000 m, Petrobras developed new drilling projects that have crossed upwards of 2,000 m of salt. Data obtained from these wells allowed the determination that pre-salt rock covers an 800 km-by-200 km area that ranges from Espírito Santo to Santa Catarina, at water depths of 1,000 m to 3,000 m.