Equinor To Hire Rig For Carcará Development Campaign

Equinor Bid Will Have An Eight-Year Contract, The First Long-Term Agreement Since The Oil And Gas Sector Crisis Began

At The Beginning Of The Year, Equinor Found Oil West Of Carcará And Notified Anp, since then the Norwegian oil company (formerly Statoil) has significantly shaken up the Brazilian offshore market.
Equinor launched a bid last Friday to contract a drilling rig for the development of the Carcará field in the Santos basin.

This is the first action by a foreign company bidding for the hiring of a rig under a long-term contract. The deal stipulates four years, extendable for another four, and the rig must be available to start drilling between May and June 2021.
According to the bidding notice, the equipment must be capable of operating at 3,000 m of water depth and must operate for eight uninterrupted years, as it will drill between 18 and 20 wells, the trend is that the oil company renews the contract at least two more times.

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The bad news is that no Brazilian company was invited to participate in the bidding. The process is being conducted by Equinor in Norway, which specified that the rig should be equipped with a Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) system and dual activity.

Since no national company has equipment available to meet the contractual requirements, the bidding will likely go to favorites EnscoRowan, Transocean, and the Norwegian companies Seadrill and Odfjell. The companies have five weeks to submit their proposals.

FPSO And Subsea

It is speculated in the market that Equinor’s initiative to bid for a rig that will only drill in 2021 is a strong signal that the oil company wants to get ahead of the high demand for this type of equipment in the coming years.
The first oil from the Carcará field is expected between 2023 and 2024, and three and a half years later, the start of the complementary phase of the asset, which was acquired in the 2nd production-sharing round in 2016, in partnership with ExxonMobil (40%) and Galp (20%), is already planned.

The West Saturn rig from Seadrill will finish this month its drilling campaign in Carcará, and meanwhile, Equinor is in the market discussing the FEEDs (front-end engineering design) for the FPSO, which could be the largest pre-salt (220 thousand barrels/day) and the SURF (subsea risers, umbilicals, and flowlines) of the project.

Also Read! The Sixth Pre-Salt Oil Auction Attracts Four More And Reaches A Total Of 17 Participating Companies!