The Lapa oil field is a deepwater oil field in the pre-salt Guaratiba Group of the

South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

Santos Basin The Santos Basin ( pt, Bacia de Santos) is an approximately large mostly offshore sedimentary basin. It is located in the south Atlantic Ocean, some southeast of Santos, Brazil. The basin is one of the Brazilian basins to have resulted from th ...

, off the coast of

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. The field lies in water depths of approximately . When the discovery of the field was initially reported, it caused widespread commotion because of the speculated size of the field, which surpassed the Mexican Cantarell Complex, the biggest oil field complex outside of the Middle East. The size of Lapa, then known as Carioca and later as Sugar Loaf, was announced as possibly "as large as ". Later appraisal of the field drastically reduced the reserves to the current estimate of . The field was taken into production in December 2016 and is operated by Petrobras with BG and Repsol-Sinopec as partners.

History

Microbialite Three Poles Diver 50 - 60 feet

The field was formerly known as Carioca, named after the demonym for people from Rio de Janeiro, and later renamed to Pão de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf), after the iconic

Sugarloaf Mountain Sugarloaf Mountain ( pt, Pão de Açúcar, ) is a peak situated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the mouth of Guanabara Bay on a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. Rising above the harbor, the peak is named for its resemblance to ...

of the city. Being discovered in the pre-salt of the Santos Basin after the giant

Tupi oil field The Tupi oil field (reverted from Lula oil field) is a large oil field located in the Santos Basin, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The field was originally nicknamed in honor of the Tupi people and later named after the mollusc, how ...

(2007), then called Tupi, and just before Júpiter in January 2008, the first reports about the reserves caused high expectations. It was speculated and released to the press by a spokesman of the Brazilian national petroleum agency, Agência Nacional do Petróleo (ANP), that "the field could contain reserves as large as " of oil,All eyes on Brazil
/ref> which would make it the biggest discovery in 30 years and one of the largest oil fields worldwide, the biggest outside of the Middle East, surpassing the Cantarell Complex of the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

and the

Bolivar Coastal Field The Bolivar Coastal Fields (BCF), also known as the Bolivar Coastal Complex, is located on the eastern margin of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. Bolivar Coastal Field is the largest oil field in South America with its 6,000-7,000 wells and forest of ...

of the Venezuelan oil belt. The operator of the field, state oil company Petrobras, refuted this statement as it was "far too early" to know the size of the field while the first appraisal well Sugar Loaf-1 was still drilling. The

oil price The price of oil, or the oil price, generally refers to the spot price of a barrel () of benchmark crude oil—a reference price for buyers and sellers of crude oil such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), Brent Crude, Dubai Crude, OPEC Ref ...

plummeted after the announcement of the discovery.Ruppert, 2009, p.39 The excitement about Carioca has been mentioned as an example of " oil fever" in the exploration of the Brazilian deepwater pre-salt plays. After appraisal of the field, the reserve estimate was downsized to and taken into production in December 2016.Lapa Field
/ref>

Reservoir

The reservoir of the Lapa oil field is the pre-salt Guaratiba Group, a

Hauterivian The Hauterivian is, in the geologic timescale, an age in the Early Cretaceous Epoch or a stage in the Lower Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 132.9 ± 2 Ma and 129.4 ± 1.5 Ma (million years ago). The Hauterivian is preceded by the ...

to Aptian sequence of

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

s and clastic sediments of which the

microbialite Microbialite is a benthic sedimentary deposit made of carbonate mud (particle diameter < 5 μm) that is formed with the mediation of microbes. The constituent carbonate mud is a type of

stromatolite Stromatolites () or stromatoliths () are layered sedimentary formations ( microbialite) that are created mainly by photosynthetic microorganisms such as cyanobacteria, sulfate-reducing bacteria, and Pseudomonadota (formerly proteobacteria). T ...

-like limestone hosts vast amounts of oil. The sediments were deposited in half-grabens in the early stage of the basin evolution, with the Early Cretaceous opening of the South Atlantic caused by the break-up of Gondwana.Ribeiro da Silva & Pereira, 2017, p.134 The carbonate reservoir contains good quality light 26° API oil that was potentially producing at per day.Ribeiro da Silva & Pereira, 2017, p.135Ribeiro da Silva & Pereira, 2017, p.136

References

Bibliography

* * {{cite LSA , last= Ruppert , first=Michael C , year=2009 , title=Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fY3KM_dS-YsC&pg=PA39 , publisher=Chelsea Green Publishing , pages=1–264 , accessdate=2017-09-07 Oil fields of Brazil Santos Basin Petrobras oil and gas fields

History

Reservoir

See also

References

Bibliography