Hat trick for SLB as Petrobras takes electrification steps at Brazilian oilfield

U.S.-headquartered technology player SLB has won three completion hardware and services contracts with Petrobras for multiple subsea wells on an oilfield off the coast of Brazil. These deals boost the Brazilian state-owned energy giant’s move toward full production system electrification.

The trio of contracts for electric and digital-ready completions covers up to 35 subsea wells for the development of Petrobras’ Buzios Wave II oilfield. As SLB’s scope of work includes its full bore electric interval control valves and electric subsurface safety valves, the company sees these awards as “a catalyst toward full production system electrification” for the Brazilian giant, improving production availability with more reliable completions.

Steve Gassen, President of Production Systems at SLB, commented: “By leveraging the electrification and digitalization of completions from SLB, Petrobras will increase its field recovery efficiency in complex and challenging pre-salt reservoirs. This contract award represents a critical milestone on Petrobras’ journey to digitally integrated offshore electric production systems. It will improve efficiency and deploy innovative technologies in Brazil.”

This conversion to electric completions is expected to enable Petrobras to gain the ability to control a more sophisticated system in the subsurface. According to SLB, full electrification of completions opens doors to maximum production control across multiple reservoir drains, potentially requiring fewer wells and limiting heavy workovers during the productive life of the Buzios field wells.

The U.S. firm highlights that the lion’s share of the technology to be deployed in Buzios, which is available to other operators of Brazilian pre-salt fields, was developed at its Taubaté Engineering Center in Brazil for Brazilian pre-salt, in collaboration with CENPES, the Petrobras research center, and TotalEnergies.

In February 2024, Baker Hughes won an integrated well construction services contract for the Buzios field, which is slated to begin in the first half of 2025 and will entail drilling services, drill bits, wireline, cementing, wellbore clean up, fishing, remedial tools, fluids, services, and geosciences. The current development concept for this deepwater field encompasses 11 platforms. Petrobras is the operator of Buzios with an 88.99% stake while CNOOC (7.34%) and CNODC (3.67%) are its partners.

Petrobras believes that oil and gas will propel and fund the energy transition to greener sources of supply, thus, the largest slice of its $102 billion investment pie in its new strategic plan for the 2024-2028 period has been earmarked for these fossil fuels.

As the Brazilian heavyweight is also on a mission to curb its greenhouse gas footprint, the firm plans to dish out $11.5 billion on projects that will bring it closer to reaching its net zero goals, spotlighting the role of biorefining, wind, solar, carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), and hydrogen in this decarbonization quest.

SLB is also determined to pursue low-carbon opportunities, as confirmed by its deal to get a hold of majority ownership in Aker Carbon Capture (ACC). This agreement enables the duo to combine their respective carbon capture businesses. The U.S. technology firm made inroads with Equinor in bringing fully autonomous drilling operations to life while drilling a well section offshore Brazil.

The company also launched a compact methane instrument to enable low-cost, mass deployment of accurate, and continuous methane monitoring across oil and gas operations to eliminate emissions.