Brazil’s state-owned oil giant Petrobras has started operations on the Lula field, located in the Santos Basin offshore Brazil, by connecting the first production well to the FPSO Cidade de Saquarema.

The production well was connected on Friday, July 8, and the output was stabilized to around 30 million barrels per day (bpd) on Monday, July 11.

The FPSO Cidade de Saquarema departed the Rio de Janeiro-based Brasa shipyard heading towards Lula field in late May. The SBM Offshore-owned vessel is under a 20-year lease and operate contract with the Brazilian company.

Petrobras noted that this is the tenth major production system operating in the pre-salt area and that the full scope of the Lula project includes 18 wells.

The vessel has a processing capacity of up to 150,000 barrels of crude oil and 6 million cubic meters of gas per day, storage capacity of approximately 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, and it operates in a water depth of 2200 meters.

The Lula area is located in concession BM-S-11, operated by Petrobras (65%) in partnership with BG E & P Brazil – subsidiary company of Royal Dutch Shell (25%) – and Petrogal Brazil (10%).

In the third quarter, Petrobras plans to start up another, eleventh production system in the Lapa field, offshore Brazil, with the installation of the FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba, which arrived at the field in June.