TotalEnergies SE and its partners have started up the Lapa Southwest project, increasing production capacity in the Lapa field in the Santos basin offshore Brazil to about 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil.
Adding 25,000 bpd, Lapa Southwest connects three wells to the existing Lapa floating production, storage and offloading facility (FPSO), the French energy giant said in a press release.
TotalEnergies exploration and production president Nicolas Terraz said Brazil is “a key growth country” for the company. The South American nation contributed 184,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day to TotalEnergies’ production last year, according to the statement.
The new project “delivers low-cost and low-emission oil production in line with our company strategy and contributes to the achievement of our objective to grow our production by 3 percent per year until 2030”, Terraz said.
TotalEnergies announced the final investment decision (FID) on Lapa Southwest January 16, 2023 with an expected budget of around $1 billion.
TotalEnergies operates Lapa with a 48 percent stake. Shell PLC holds 27 percent. A joint venture owned 60 percent by Spain’s Repsol SA and 40 percent by state-owned China Petroleum and Chemical Corp has a 25 percent interest in Lapa.
TotalEnergies had increased its stake from 45 percent under a swap with Shell agreed last year, under which TotalEnergies sold its stake in the former Gato do Mato field, now called Orca, to Shell.
Targeted to be put onstream 2029, Orca, also in Santos, is designed to produce up to 120,000 bpd of oil, according to the final investment decision announced by Shell March 21, 2025.
TotalEnergies and Shell earlier unlocked new capacity in another Santos field, Mero. The Mero4 project is designed to grow the field’s output to up to 770,000 bpd.
Mero4 uses the new Alexandre de Gusmão FPSO, which has a production capacity of 180,000 bpd. Mero4 would also enable 12 million cubic meters (423.78 million cubic feet) a day of gas compression. The consortium approved the project August 2021. The production start was announced May 2025.
Mero, part of the Libra block, now has four operational FPSOs. Guanabara (Mero1) came online 2022, followed by Sepetiba (Mero2) in 2023 and Marechal Duque de Caxias (Mero3) in 2024.
Brazil’s state-owned Petrobras operates Mero with a 38.6 percent stake. Shell and TotalEnergies each own 19.3 percent. China National Petroleum Corp and China National Offshore Oil Corp each hold 9.65 percent. The Brazilian government’s Pré-Sal Petróleo SA owns the remaining 3.5 percent.
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
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