TotalEnergies reveals plans to invest $1 billion in oil development off Brazil

French-headquartered energy giant TotalEnergies has approved a final investment decision (FID) for an oil development project located in the Santos Basin, 300 km off the coast of Brazil.

TotalEnergies announced the FID for the Lapa South-West oil development project on Monday, 16 January 2023. The French player operates this project with a 45 per cent interest, in partnership with Shell (30 per cent) and Repsol Sinopec (25 per cent).

David Mendelson, Senior Vice President, Americas at TotalEnergies Exploration & Production, remarked: “This latest development is an important milestone for TotalEnergies in Brazil that will increase its operated production in the pre-salt Santos Basin, a key growth area for the company.

“With its efficient engineering approach and synergies with existing facilities, this project illustrates TotalEnergies’ strategy of focusing on low-cost, low-emissions assets.”

The Lapa South-West project will be developed through three wells, connected to an existing FPSO – located 12 km away – currently producing in the northeast part of the Lapa field since 2016. This development represents an investment of approximately $1 billion.

Lapa is a pre-salt oil and gas field in the Santos basin, which lies within the core pre-salt cluster area previously known as Carioca before its declaration of commerciality in December 2013.

Discovered in 2007, the Lapa field is situated in the BM-S-9 block, which was split into two sub-blocks following the discovery of Sapinhoá. The Lapa field’s full commercial production started in late 2016 through the 100,000 b/d FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba MV27.

The FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba MV27 has an oil processing capacity of 100,000 barrels a day, a gas processing capacity of 177 million cubic feet a day, an oil storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels and a water injection capacity of 120,000 barrels of water per day.

The production start-up at the Lapa South-West project is expected in 2025, increasing production from the Lapa field by 25,000 barrels of oil per day, bringing the overall production to 60,000 barrels of oil per day.

Regarding TotalEnergies’ recent activities in Brazil, it is worth noting that the oil major was part of a consortium, which won the award of an offshore exploration block in December 2022, during the first cycle of Brazil’s open acreage under a production-sharing regime bid held in Rio de Janeiro.