Eighth FPSO at Brazil’s giant deepwater field begins producing, four to go

May 4, 2026, by Nadja Skopljak

Brazilian state-owned oil & gas giant Petrobras has commenced production from the eighth floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel at the Búzios field offshore Brazil earlier than planned.

FPSO P-79 is the eight of the 12 units planned for installation in the Búzios field and joins the seven others already in operation; Source: Petrobras

Located in the pre-salt layer of the Santos Basin, the P-79 platform began production on May 1, ahead of the date scheduled in Business Plan 2026–2030 (BP 26–30). The unit has a capacity of 180 thousand barrels of oil per day and 7.2 million cubic meters of gas compression per day.

This eighth platform in the Búzios field will increase the field’s total installed production capacity to approximately 1.33 million barrels of oil per day.

P-79, which arrived in Brazil in February from South Korea with commissioning and operations teams on board, is part of the Búzios 8 production development project, which includes 14 wells, comprising eight producers and six injectors.

Discovered in 2010, the Búzios field is located 180 kilometers offshore Rio de Janeiro, in ultra-deep waters at depths of over 2,000 meters. It is currently operated with FPSOs P-74, P-75, P-76, P-77, Almirante Barroso, Almirante Tamandaré and P-78, which was started up in December 2025. P-80, P-82 and P-83 are under construction, and Búzios 12 is under bidding. In total, the field will house 12 FPSOs.

The project will allow gas to be exported to the mainland via connection to the Rota 3 pipeline, with the potential to expand the gas supply in Brazil by up to 3 million cubic meters per day.

The Búzios field surpassed the milestone of 1 million barrels of oil produced per day in October 2025, becoming Petrobras’s largest-producing ultra-deepwater field.

The consortium behind the field comprises Petrobras as the operator, and Chinese partner companies CNOOC and CNODC, and PPSA, responsible for managing the production sharing contracts (PSCs).