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 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (; born Luiz Inácio da Silva; 27 October 1945), known mononymously as Lula, is a Brazilian politician, trade unionist, and former metalworker who is the president-elect of Brazil. A member of the Workers' Party, ...

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 Condensate may refer to: * The liquid phase produced by the condensation of steam or any other gas * The product of a chemical condensation reaction, other than water * Natural-gas condensate, in the natural gas industry * ''Condensate'' (album) ...

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, 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, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

, 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 BG Group plc was a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom. On 8 April 2015, Royal Dutch Shell announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire BG Group for $70 billion, subject to regulatory and ...

holds 25% and

Galp Energia Galp Energia, SGPS, S.A. is a Portuguese multinational energy corporation, headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal. Galp consists of more than 100 companies engaged in every aspect of the oil and natural gas supply, hydrocarbon exploration and product ...

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 fields.

Production

On April 22, 2009,

BW Offshore BW Offshore Limited is a global owner and operator of floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels. The company is listed on Oslo Stock Exchange. The company has its headquarters in Singapore and Oslo, Norway but operates international ...

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 (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