“Without a pipeline to transport the gas from the field, it cannot start producing,” the spokesperson said in reference to the Peroa field, the first in line to start production. The development project includes a fixed unmanned platform on Peroa and a 50-km subsea pipeline from the platform to the gas-processing plant onshore at the town of Cacimbas in Espirito Santo state.
The pipeline causing the delay is the 128-km Vitoria-Cacimbas gas pipeline that Petrobras started building, but stopped construction of in the fourth quarter of 2005 because the contractors, Spanish companies Masa and Dragados, abandoned the project, claiming adverse financial conditions.
This is the shortest stretch of the 1,400-km strategic Gasene gas pipeline project Petrobras is planning to build to link the gas-rich SE region of the country with the NE. Press officials at Petrobras’ headquarters in Rio de Janeiro said a new tender to hire contractors to complete the Vitoria-Cacimbas pipeline has started. The company declined to give details as to when the tendering process would be completed.
Petrobras announced last year that the Peroa field would start production in October, 2005; the date was then postponed to December. The entire supporting infrastructure is now ready except the pipeline. “The platform has been tested and all the rest of the infrastructure is ready,” said the spokesperson. “The information I have is that production could start before the end of the first quarter, but to be safe we are announcing startup by the end of the first half.”
The company originally budgeted $278 million in the development of the fields and the supporting infrastructure, excluding the Vitoria-Cacimbas pipeline. Peroa and Cangoa lie close to each other in 67m of water offshore in the northern region of Espirito Santo state, in the basin of the same name. Gas was first discovered in Cangoa in 1998 and in Peroa in 1996. The two fields together have estimated reserves of 15b cum of gas, or 5% of Petrobras’ total 296b cum proven gas reserves in Brazil at end-2005.