Petrobras to lease FPSO for Piranema field

Brazil's federal energy company Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) has signed a contract to lease Norwegian oil services company Sevan Marine's SSP300 floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, Petrobras said in a statement The vessel will operate on the Piranema field in the country's northeastern region. Petrobras and Sevan signed a memorandum of understanding for the contract in November 2004. The SSP300 will be the first round hull platform to operate in the world It is being built in China and is expected to start operations on the Piranema field in 2006, Petrobras said. The platform will have capacity to produce 20,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil, compress 3.6 million cubic meters a day of gas and store 300,000b/d. The Piranema field is 37km from the coast of the northeastern state of Sergipe in the SEAL-100 block in the northeastern Sergipe-Alagoas sedimentary basin. The field has water depths of 1,000-1,600 meters. The field was declared commercially feasible at end-August 2004. Petrobras had announced plans to invest US$476mn to develop the field, which is estimated to have 76 million barrels of light crude at 43 degrees API.