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PRIO arrives in the State of Espírito Santo (ES) and will generate around R$ 2.5 billion in royalties and create jobs with Wahoo field

12 Mar 2024 icone de compartilhamento

Executives from the largest independent oil and gas company in Brazil present the Wahoo field project at an event promoted by Findes with local companies and suppliers

Vitória, February 8 – PRIO, the largest independent oil and gas company in Brazil, intends to begin well drilling work in Wahoo field, in Campos Basin, soon, as soon as the environmental license for the activity is issued by the Ibama. This is the first field entirely developed by the company and will be made commercially viable thanks to another innovative project for interconnection between operations (tieback), a pioneer project in Latin America.

In an event held at the headquarters of the Federation of Industries of Espírito Santo (Findes), this Thursday (02/08), the Director and Vice-President of PRIO’s Board of Directors, Emiliano Gomes, and the company’s executive manager, Jean Calvi, presented the Wahoo project to an audience made up of businesspeople from the industrial sector of Espírito Santo. According to Calvi, even before the field begins operating, the project already generates around R$ 860 million in investments in the supply chain of local suppliers.

“The development of Wahoo field provides a series of gains for the oil and gas industry, mainly for the State of Espírito Santo, by increasing jobs, encouraging the development of suppliers and collection of royalties”, highlights Emiliano. To date, a few hundred direct jobs have been created by the project, alongside suppliers. The estimate is that the total payment in royalties will reach R$ 2.5 billion for Espírito Santo and municipalities close to the field.

Innovation and technology as pillars

PRIO completed the process of acquiring Wahoo field in March 2021 and in December of the same year registered the declaration of commerciality, after a viability study process on the production of the field. It is worth mentioning that, although there are exploratory wells drilled in the field proving the existence of oil, the previous operator did not produce oil, as the project developed had made the infrastructure for the production and flow of oil and gas unfeasible.

PRIO – which is a specialist in the search for efficiency in mature fields or even in those considered economically unviable by other companies – carried out a study on the exploration of marginal reservoirs and identified the opportunity to connect Wahoo field to the structure already in operation in Frade field. Accordingly, the company will install the so-called underwater tieback of around 32 km, connecting the Wahoo wells to the FPSO Valente/Frade vessel, responsible for the production of Frade field. “This interconnection between fields using existing infrastructure is the condition for the success of Wahoo’s development. Without the FPSO Frade structure, the project would be economically unviable”, explains Calvi.

To put this entire underwater infrastructure into practice, PRIO has a chain of qualified suppliers committed to efficiently developing each piece of equipment that guarantees the flow of oil and gas to be produced in the field. Currently, at least five local direct suppliers are already working on the project, in addition to CPVV and BAVIT port terminal, which will meet the demands of Offshore support activities.

With first oil scheduled for the third quarter of 2024, the project estimates the production of 40 thousand barrels of oil per day.