Brazil's state-owned oil firm Petrobras aims to make better use of the associated natural gas in its prolific oil-rich pre-salt area by having offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) units to process the gas, whose production has been rising with growing oil output in the area.
Offshore LNG liquefaction could be a solution to the associated gas from oil fields 100 miles off the coast and could reduce flaring, Viviana Coelho, Corporate Emissions and Climate Change Manager at Petrobras, said at a webinar, as carried by Reuters.
Petrobras currently ships the natural gas produced in the pre-salt area via pipelines to the coast, where it is processed. In the past, the Brazilian oil firm has said that insufficient infrastructure for natural gas production could limit its efforts to boost crude oil output in the pre-salt area.
Petrobras will look to reduce its emissions from routine flaring to zero by 2030, according to its Corporate Emissions and Climate Change Manager, who added that the firm also targets to cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30-50 percent by 2025.
Petrobras uses a large portion of the natural gas it pumps to stimulate and control reservoir pressure at the oil reservoirs to increase oil production.
Just last week, the Brazilian oil firm said that it had started production of oil and natural gas from Atapu through platform P-70, in the eastern part of the Santos Basin pre-salt basin, near the Búzios field.
At Búzios, Petrobras' four production platforms produced a record daily volume of crude oil and natural gas on June 27, the company said. The new production record saw the Buzios field pumping 664,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) and 822,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed).
Earlier this year, Petrobras set a new oil export record of 1 million bpd in April, as domestic demand plunged.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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