The Tupi oil field (reverted from Lula oil field) is a large oil field located in the

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

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

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 was originally nicknamed in honor of the

Tupi people A subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, the Tupi people were one of the largest groups of indigenous Brazilians before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 ...

and later named after the mollusc, however it was also ambiguously similar to the name of former Brazilian president

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Luiz is a Portuguese given name that is an alternative form of Luís. It's archaic in Portugal, but common in Brazil. Notable people referred to by this name include the following: People *Luiz Bonfá (1922-2001), Brazilian guitarist and composer ...

. It is considered to be the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the term We ...

's largest oil discovery of the last 30 years.

History

left, Brazilian President Lula da Silva on the launch of the P-52 oil Platform The Tupi field was discovered in October 2006 by Petrobras. The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called the field ''second independence for Brazil''. The field was originally named Tupi but in 2010 it was renamed Lula. The name 'Lula' means squid in Portuguese but also refers to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The upper estimate of of recoverable oil would be enough to meet the total global demand for crude oil for about three months at the 2008 global extraction rate of around . In January 2008 Petrobras announced the discovery of the

Jupiter field Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth th ...

, a huge

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

and condensate field which could equal the Tupi oil field in size. It lies east of Tupi.

Reservoir

The Tupi field is located in the geological formation known as the Brazilian pre-salt layer, which lies below of water and then of salt, sand and rocks. The Tupi accumulation, in block BM-S-11 of the Santos basin, contains at least of recoverable oil which could increase Brazil's reserves by 62%. This would make it twice the size of the

Roncador Roncador Bank is a mostly-submerged atoll with several sandy cays. It lies in the west Caribbean Sea off the coast of Central America. Geography It is about 15 by 6 kilometers in size, with an area of 65 km2 composed mostly of lagoo ...

, previously Brazil's largest field. Tupi is a sub-salt discovery—held in rocks beneath a salt layer that, in places, reaches thicknesses of over . The crude oil is an intermediate or medium gravity oil of 28–30 °

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

, which corresponds to a

specific gravity Relative density, or specific gravity, is the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for liquids is nearly always measured with respect to water (molecule), wa ...

around 0.88. The Tupi crude oil is considered sweet, which means that the sulfur content is less than 0.7% sulfur by weight. Recent estimates have pushed the total to greater than equivalent, though Petrobras has not confirmed the highest estimate. These estimates are being put into severe doubt by impartial analysts.

Ownership

Block BM-S-11, which contains the Tupi field, is operated by

Petrobras Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., better known by the portmanteau Petrobras (), is a state owned enterprise, state-owned Brazilian multinational corporation in the petroleum industry headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The company's name transla ...

with a 65% controlling stake while BG Group holds 25% and Galp Energia has the remaining 10% interest. According to

Bear Stearns The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was a New York-based global investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 as part of the global financial crisis and recession, and was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chase. The compa ...

estimates, the value of the oil in the block ranges from $25 billion to $60 billion. BM-S-11 also includes Tupi Sul, Iara and

Iracema ''Iracema'' (in Portuguese: ''Iracema - A Lenda do Ceará'') is one of the three indigenous novels by José de Alencar. It was first published in 1865. The novel has been adapted into several films. Plot introduction The story revolves around t ...

fields.

Production

On April 22, 2009, BW Offshore and Petrobras let up the first crude oil from test well at Tupi field. The celebration ceremony for the beginning of production was held aboard the ''BW Cidade de Sao Vicente''

floating production, storage and offloading vessel A floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the production and processing of hydrocarbons, and for the storage of oil. An FPSO vessel is designed to receive h ...

(FPSO) on May 1, 2009. The president was expected to visit, but did not show up. The first producing well will provide output of while the second well is expected to produce . By 2020, Petrobras expects to produce up to . Full field development may include up to 300 producing and injector wells, with total gross oil production reaching and of gas. The drilling of the first 15 wells has cost $1 billion. It is estimated that the total field cost will come to $50–$100 billion owing to the complexity of the geological formation. Up to 12 FPSOs may be needed for full production at Tupi. The field produces 100,000 barrels a day (January 2013). The field produced and of gas in 2021.

References

External links