Rio de Janeiro, September 13, 2012 – Petróleo Brasileiro S.A.

- Petrobras informs that on September 6, 2012, production started at the Chinook field, in the U.S.

Gulf of Mexico,  which is connected to the FPSO BW Pioneer (a Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading platform).

 

The Chinook #4 production well was drilled and completed in Lower Tertiary reservoirs, a promising offshore exploration frontier in the Gulf of Mexico, at a depth of about 8,000 meters.

 

This FPSO, located approximately 250 kilometers off the coast of the State of Louisiana at a water depth of 2,500 meters, is also connected to the Cascade field which initiated production in February 2012.

 

The BW Pioneer is the first FPSO to produce oil and gas in the U.S.

portion of the Gulf of Mexico, and has the capacity to process 80 thousand barrels of oil and 500 thousand cubic meters of natural gas per day.

Petrobras is the first company to develop an oil field in the Gulf of Mexico using a FPSO, a technology that has already been successfully and systematically employed in Brazil.

 

Chinook is owned by Petrobras (66.67%) in partnership with Total Exploration Production USA, Inc.

(33.33%).