(Bloomberg) – Brazilian state-controlled oil producer Petrobras’s P-52 offshore production platform has been shut down for the last nine months after a flammable gas leak and does not yet have a timetable to come back online, the company says.
A working group that includes specialists from Petrobras’s research center has until October to finalize its assessment of options for resuming operations, Petrobras’s executive director of engineering, technology and innovation Renata Baruzzi said in a Thursday interview. It remains unclear whether the platform will resume production this year, she said.
The emergency shutdown last October is suspected to have been caused by a rupture in a gas-lift riser connected to the platform. An inspection of the platform’s remaining gas-lift risers identified similar degradation in another riser.
Brazil’s oil regulator, known as ANP, said it instructed Petrobras in December to not resume operations until it had completed an investigation into the failure, implemented corrective measures and demonstrated that no critical operational safety risks remained.
“Petrobras has yet to provide the ANP with evidence that those conditions have been met,” the agency said in an emailed response to Bloomberg News.
P-52 is one of four platforms producing oil and gas at the Roncador field, which is operated by Petroleo Brasileiro SA with a 75% stake, and partner Equinor ASA with the remaining.
The field is located at Campos Basin, where productionpeaked in 2011 and then started to fall off. Petrobras is looking to revitalize Campos’s older fields, with a $19 billion spending plan outlined in the 2026–30 strategic plan.
Located off the northern coast of Rio de Janeiro state and extending into southern Espirito Santo in Brazil’s southeast, Campos Basin made Petrobras a major offshore producer in the late 20th century.
The P-52 oil platform began operations in 2007 with a design capacity of 180,000 bopd. According to Baruzzi, however, P-52 had been producing well below that level, at about 35,000 bpd. None of the platforms in the Campos Basin are currently operating at full capacity, she said.
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