Production begins from Petrobras FPSO at Lula field

• Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) says it has started oil and gas production at the Lula Central project with the interconnection of the first production well to the Cidade de Saquarema floating production, storage and offloading unit at the giant Lula field in the pre-salt Santos basin off Brazil.
• The well flows at a stabilized rate of 30K bbl/day; the FPSO can process as much as 150K bbl/day of oil, compress 6M cm/day of gas and store as much as 1.6M barrels of oil.
• The Central Lula project encompasses 18 wells, split evenly between production and injection; PBR is operator of the Lula field with a 65% interest, with Royal Dutch Shell's (RDS.A, RDS.B) BG E&P Brasil unit owning 25%.