DE E PWATE R DR I LLI N G MAR KETS & TECH NOLOG I E S
Fast innovation process allows
Petrobras to tap Búzios with
lower cost, higher reliability
Alignment of well design with technology R&D
and procurement strategy among innovations
helping to maximize the presalt field’s potential
BY LINDA HSIEH, EDITOR & PUBLISHER
In the Búzios presalt field offshore Brazil,
the numbers are staggering. The thickness
of its oil reservoir, for example, can reach
up to 480 m, comparable to the majestic
Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro.

Just one single well on Búzios can reach a
production peak of 60,000 bbl/day, and two
FPSOs on the field were able to reach their
maximum capacities with just three wells.

Further, by 2026, the field is anticipated
to account for 33% of Petrobras’ total oil
production. “Búzios is probably the largest deep-
water field in the world, or at least the
largest deepwater project in the world
at the moment,” Marcos Coradini Tolfo,
Well Construction General Manager for
the Búzios Field, said at the 2022 IADC
International Deepwater Drilling & Human
Performance Conference, held in Rio on
7-8 December. He expects Búzios to even-
tually produce 2 million bbl/day.

To tap the full potential of a giant field
like this, Petrobras knew it had to innovate,
both in terms of the way it approached
technology and in its well construction
processes. In the first phase of the Búzios’ develop-
ment after the field’s discovery in 2010,
Petrobras had been contractually bound to
produce only a limited volume. Embarking
on the second phase of development –
after securing a new contract in 2019 with
the Brazilian government to access the
rest of the reservoir – Petrobras developed
a methodology called Selepoço . It’s a con-
cept connecting well design with technol-
ogy opportunities in the early stages of the
project, Mr Tolfo said.

32 “Usually we would define the design of
the well and the technologies that we are
going to apply in phase two of the project,”
he explained. “But if we wait until phase
two, some of the technologies wouldn’t be
applicable anymore because of the lead
time to apply those technologies.”
Recognizing that being able to leverage
new technologies would be key to achiev-
ing two primary goals – reduced cost and
increased reliability – the operator zeroed in
on minimizing the lead time to deploy new
technologies . This led to the creation of the
Well Efficiency Program, or PEP70, where
the ambition was to achieve an average well
construction duration of 70 days. It defined
several focus areas for Búzios, including
connecting technology development with
the project’s procurement strategy.

The other pillars of the program were:
well safety, which called for having high-
capacity shear rams; top-hole drilling
improvements; new completion technolo-
gies, including transitioning to electric con-
trols; and reservoir scope optimization.

Open-hole intelligent
completions Mr Tolfo cited Petrobras' open-hole intel-
ligent completion technology, called PACI,
as an example of the program’s success .

Petrobras began looking at the technol-
ogy in 2011 in the early days of presalt
development, yet the first installation didn’t
happen until 2019. “We had eight years
from concept to first field installation, and
eight years is too long,” he said, noting that
Petrobras now aims to reduce that time to
four years.

Petrobras’ current development plans
for the Búzios field, located in the pre-
salt Santos Basin, calls for a firm 11
FPSOs. Four of those are already pro-
ducing, and a fifth unit is expected to
start producing in mid-2023. Six more
units are scheduled to be delivered by
2027 , and Petrobras is now considering
a potential 12th FPS O.

He added that the well where the first
open-hole intelligent completion was
installed took 91 days to drill and com-
plete, and “today we already have one
well that was drilled and completed in
65 days.”
A dditional work is ongoing to further
advance the technology. In 2024, for exam-
ple, Petrobras expects to install its first all-
electric open-hole intelligent completion,
“which we expect will be a game-changer
for us in terms of reliability and ability to
manage the reservoir,” Mr Tolfo said.

In terms of innovations on the drilling
rigs working on Búzios, Mr Tolfo said
Petrobras is planning to trial NOV’s NOVOS
drilling automation platform on one drill-
ship, and two other rigs on the field – one
drillship and one semisubmersible – will
be outfitted with a new shear ram technol-
ogy called K-BOS . Multiple rigs on Búzios
are also already equipped for managed
pressure drilling (MPD) operations. While
MPD isn’t exactly new anymore, he said,
Petrobras continues to work on enhancing
the way MPD is deployed – for example,
working through IADC to enhance well
control training in MPD operations. DC
JAN UARY/FEB RUARY 2023 • D R I LLI N G CO N T R ACTO R