Brazil sets oil-export record in 2020

According to the Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, Brazil registered a record for oil exports in 2020. According to him, sales of the commodity abroad totaled an average of 1.4 million barrels/day last year.

Bento also stated that in May, exports reached a level of 1.9 million barrels/day. It is worth remembering that on January 7, Petrobras announced that its new record level of 2.84 million barrels of oil equivalent daily (BO/day) surpassed the previous record set in 2015, of 2.79 million BOE/day.

The company also separately reported that it reached a record in oil production. Last year, the company produced 2.28 million barrels/day, compared to 2.23 million barrels/day recorded in 2015. Pre-salt accounted for 66% of the volume produced by the company in 2020. In 2015, for comparison purposes, this percentage was 24%.

In total, the company produced an average of 1.86 million BOE/day in the region in 2020. The volumes produced in 2020 exceeded by 5% the targets originally forecast for the year, in line with the revised October forecast. Petrobras attributed the higher-than-expected result to four factors: (1) production above the nominal processing capacity in the Búzios field as a result of the greater temporary availability of power generation and gas compression on the platforms in that field; (2) the lower number of interventions to combat CO2 corrosion in underwater gas-injection pipelines, due to the development of new inspection tools and technologies; (3) the slowed production decline observed in the Tupi (ex-Lula) and Sapinhoá fields, due to the better performance of the reservoirs; and (4) greater production efficiency and optimization of production stops on platforms, despite the operational restrictions resulting from the Covid19 pandemic.

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