Petrobras Will Receive 33 New Drilling Rigs by 2012

Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, will take delivery of 33 new oil rigs by 2012 as it seeks to boost output, an official said.

Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based company is known, will receive 11 rigs this year, head of Exploration Services Erardo Barbosa said today at a news conference in Rio de Janeiro. The company operates or leases 40 rigs now, he said.
The rigs are part of a $104.6 billion exploration and oil output plan through 2013. Under the program, Petrobras hopes to increase production by more than half to 3.66 million barrels a day in 2013 from 2.4 million barrels a day in 2008. Exploration and production will account for more than half the company’s $174.4 billion spending plan in the period.

“We can’t be conservative in our goals,” Exploration Director Guilherme Estrella said at the same conference. “We must be ambitious.”

Petrobras, whose 5 billion- to 8 billion-barrel Tupi field is the biggest oil discovery in the Americas since 1976, needs to drill dozens of wells to increase production from its offshore fields, responsible for more than 80 percent of the its output.

Many of the new wells are in waters more than 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) deep and require ships that cost about $1 billion each. Of the ships on order now, most will be floating platforms for deep water, Barbosa said. The rest will be so-called “jack- up” rigs with legs that sit on the ocean floor and a platform that can be raised or lowered.

Bloomberg