TotalEnergies, Repsol, and Shell flow first oil from Brazilian offshore project

March 11, 2026, by Melisa Cavcic

TotalEnergies EP Brasil, a subsidiary of France’s energy giant TotalEnergies, has brought online an oil project in the Santos Basin, approximately 300 kilometers off the coast of Brazil.

FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba MV27; Source: MODEC

TotalEnergies, as the operator with a 48% interest, has disclosed the start-up of the Lapa South-West project offshore Brazil, which includes three wells connected to the existing floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) Lapa. The project will increase production from the Lapa field, formerly Carioca, by 25,000 barrels per day to around 60,000 gross barrels per day.

The company’s consortium partners in the project are Repsol, through the joint venture Repsol Sinopec Brazil (25%), and Shell (27%). The Lapa field in block BM-S-9A in the pre-salt Santos basin begun production in December 2016 with the FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba.

TotalEnergies’ Map of Brazilian asset; Source: TotalEnergies

Nicolas Terraz, President Exploration & Production of TotalEnergies, commented: “The start-up of our operated Lapa South-West project marks another important milestone for TotalEnergies in Brazil, a key growth country for our company.

“This project, which leverages the available capacity of the existing Lapa facilities, delivers low cost and low emission oil production in line with our company strategy and contributes to the achievement of our objective to grow our production by 3% per year until 2030.”

With the latest start-up, the French giant continues to ramp up its portfolio in Brazil, following the start-up of Mero-4 in May 2025, and ahead of the start-ups of Atapu-2 and Sépia-2 expected in 2029. TotalEnergies’ exploration and production portfolio in the country currently includes nine licenses, of which four are operated.

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José Carlos Vicente Bravo, Executive Director of International E&P at Repsol, remarked: “The start-up of Lapa Southwest is another example of our strong track record of efficient delivery on the key projects where we have taken FID in recent years. This enables us to continue high-grading our upstream portfolio.”

Repsol is focusing its exploration and production portfolio on core growth areas, with Brazil as one of the key countries, where the Raia project in BM-C-33 within the Campos Basin is among the key ones.

Being developed in partnership with Equinor and Petrobras, the project is expected to start operations in 2028, with the potential to become one of the country’s most significant sources of natural gas.