Portugal's Galp expects to boost its oil and gas production in Brazil by around 40% over the next few years, when the promising offshore field Bacalhau reaches peak output, executive board member Nuno Bastos told reporters.
Galp produces 110,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in Brazil through a 70%-30% joint venture with China's Sinopec, which has stakes in several projects.
The JV owns 20% of the Bacalhau field in the Santos Basin, where a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, with a daily capacity of 220,000 barrels, arrived in February.
Norwegian energy company Equinor, which holds a 40% stake and the operatorship of Bacalhau, expects the FPSO to start producing the first barrels in the third quarter.
"Once the FPSO reaches plateau over the next few years, Galp's production in Brazil will increase by around 40%," Bastos, who heads the upstream business, told reporters on the sidelines of an energy conference late on Wednesday.
It took 11 months for another FPSO in the Tupi-Iracema field, in the same basin, to get from the first oil to its maximum steady production capacity of 150,000 boepd, and in Bacalhau it should take longer as in this case the plateau is 220,000 boepd.
"We are working to make it as fast and efficient as possible," he said, without committing to an exact date.
Equinor estimated that the field holds more than 1 billion barrels in recoverable reserves for its first development phase. U.S. oil major ExxonMobil holds the remaining 40% of Bacalhau.
(Reuters - Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; Editing by David Holmes)