Petrobras has welcomed its P-79 floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit to the Búzios field in Brazil’s Santos Basin pre-salt, in line with the planned schedule.
The unit, capable of producing 180,000 barrels of oil per day and compressing 7.2 million cubic meters of gas per day, was towed to location with crew onboard, a strategy previously used with P-78 aimed at reducing the time to first production.
The FPSO was built by SAME Netherlands BV, a joint venture between Italy’s Saipem and South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean, in Geoje-si, where the hull construction, integration and commissioning of the topside modules were carried out.
The topside modules were built in China, Brazil, South Korea and Indonesia. The voyage from the shipyard to Brazil took approximately three months.
P-79 is one of 12 units planned for installation in the Búzios field and joins seven platforms already in operation - P-74, P-75, P-76, P-77, Almirante Barroso, Almirante Tamandaré and P-78.
“Embarking the crew during the voyage to the location allows complex FPSO systems to be brought into operational condition without interrupting the continuity of the commissioning process, in addition to enabling team training. All of this speeds up the start of production. The next steps will be anchoring the unit and connecting it to the producing wells,” said Renata Baruzzi, Petrobras's Director of Engineering, Technology and Innovation.
In October 2025, the field surpassed production of 1 million barrels of oil per day, becoming Petrobras’s largest-producing ultra-deepwater field.
The Búzios field is located in water depths of up to 2,100 metres, about 180 km offshore Rio de Janeiro state. P-79 forms part of the Búzios 8 development project, which includes 14 wells, comprising eight producers and six WAG injectors.
The Búzios consortium comprises Petrobras as operator, Chinese partners CNOOC and CNODC, and PPSA, which manages production sharing contracts.