Marlim Field Development

ABSTRACT The giant Marlim Field, located under water depths ranging from 600 m (1,968 ft) to 1,100m (3,608 ft) in Campos Basin, offshore Brazil, has an estimated oil-in-place volume of 9 billion bbl and extends over an area of 160 km 2. This paper presents a development plan conceived for this field comprising production systems at water depths ranging from 660m (2,165 ft) to 1,000m (3,280 ft) to process a peak production of 430,000 bopd from 155 subsea completed wells. A cumulative production of 1.7 billion bbl of oil and 1.1 trillion sft' of gas will be exported to shore. As a first step of the field development, a cost-effective pilot system, with 6 subsea completed wells, will produce to a floating unit moored at 600m (1,968 Ft) water depth, in order to collect data on reservoir recovery mechanisms and to evaluate technology and performance of floating production systems. INTRODUCTION The giant Marlim oil field is located Campos Basin, offshore Brazil, nearly km (62 miles) from the coast (Fig. water depths vary from 600 m (1,968 ft) 1,100 m (3,608 ft) and the field discovered in February, 1985, by wildcat well 1-RJS-219 drilled at a depth of 837 m (2,475 ft). The six wells already drilled in Marlim field indicated productivity indexes varying from 80 to 300 m 3 /day/kgf/cm2 (35.4 to 132.7 bpd/psi) and detected a single reservoir, consisting of sand with thickness of up to 100 m (328 ft), containing a 19 °API oil. Marlim Field, which occupies an area nearly 160 km2 and contains an oil-in-place volume of 1,298 million m' (8.1 billion bbl), is responsible for an increase of 20% in the Brazilian oil reserves and of 30% in the oil reserves of Campos Basin. Other wells drilled in the area have revealed other accumulations within a system referred to as Marlim Complex: in addition to the Marlim Field, the Areas of the wells 4-RJS-359, 4-RJS-377 and 4-RJS-382 also appear to be the major oil accumulations (Fig. 2). MARLIM EXPLOITATION PHILOSOPHY: R&D AND PILOT PROJECT In order to minimize the uncertainties and the losses associated with the implementation of high-risk projects, it is usual, in production management, to precede the global project by investments in R&D and/or by a pilot project. With this in mind, PETROBRAS started investing in R&D of technology for deep waters, with the purpose of becoming qualified for the Marlim Field exploitation, since such technology is not available in the international market. In parallel, PETROBRAS decided to precede the global exploitation plan of Marlim Field by a pilot production system, which will enable to increase the degree of information at reservoir level (determining dimension, continuity, potential and behavior) and technology level (testing production equipment in deep waters and evaluating the simulation of multiphase flow of heavy oil for large distances in low-temperature conditions).