The Tupi oil field (reverted from Lula oil field) is a large oil field located in the

Santos Basin The Santos Basin () is an approximately large mostly offshore sedimentary basin. It is located in the south Atlantic Ocean, some southeast of Santos, São Paulo, Santos, Brazil. The basin is one of the Brazilian basins to have resulted from th ...

, off the coast of

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

. The field was originally nicknamed in honor of the

Tupi people The Tupi people, a subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, were one of the largest groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from abo ...

and later named after the mollusc, however it was also ambiguously similar to the name of former Brazilian president

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (; born Luiz Inácio da Silva; 27 October 1945), known Mononym, mononymously as Lula, is a Brazilian politician, trade unionist and former metalworker who has served as the 39th president of Brazil since 2023. A mem ...

. It is considered to be the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the 180th meridian.- The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Geopolitically, ...

's largest oil discovery of the last 30 years.

History

left, Brazilian President Lula da Silva on the launch of the P-52 oil Platform The Tupi field was discovered in October 2006 by Petrobras. The former president of Brazil,

called the field ''second independence for Brazil''. The field was originally named Tupi but in 2010 it was renamed Lula. The name 'Lula' means squid in Portuguese but also refers to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The upper estimate of of recoverable oil would be enough to meet the total global demand for crude oil for about three months at the 2008 global extraction rate of around . In January 2008 Petrobras announced the discovery of the Jupiter field, a huge

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

and condensate field which could equal the Tupi oil field in size. It lies east of Tupi.

Reservoir

The Tupi field is located in the geological formation known as the Brazilian pre-salt layer, which lies below of water and then of salt, sand and rocks. The Tupi accumulation, in block BM-S-11 of the Santos basin, contains at least of recoverable oil which could increase Brazil's reserves by 62%. This would make it twice the size of the Roncador, previously Brazil's largest field. Tupi is a sub-salt discovery—held in rocks beneath a salt layer that, in places, reaches thicknesses of over . The crude oil is an intermediate or medium gravity oil of 28–30 °

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

, which corresponds to a

specific gravity Relative density, also called specific gravity, is a dimensionless quantity defined as the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for solids and liquids is nea ...

around 0.88. The Tupi crude oil is considered sweet, which means that the sulfur content is less than 0.7% sulfur by weight. By 2008 estimates had pushed the total to greater than equivalent, though Petrobras had not confirmed the highest estimate. These estimates were put into severe doubt by impartial analysts.

Ownership

Block BM-S-11, which contains the Tupi field, is operated by

Petrobras Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., better known by and Trade name, trading as the portmanteau Petrobras (), is a Brazilian state-owned enterprise, majority state-owned multinational corporation in the petroleum industry headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. ...

with a 65% controlling stake while

BG Group BG Group plc was a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom. On 8 April 2015, Royal Dutch Shell announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire BG Group for $70 billion, subject to regulatory an ...

holds 25% and Galp Energia has the remaining 10% interest. According to

Bear Stearns The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was an American investment bank, securities trading, and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 during the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. After its closure it was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chas ...

estimates, the value of the oil in the block ranges from $25 billion to $60 billion. BM-S-11 also includes Tupi Sul, Iara and

Iracema ''Iracema'' (in Portuguese: ''Iracema - A Lenda do Ceará'') is one of the three indigenous novels by José de Alencar. It was first published in 1865. The novel has been adapted into several films. Plot introduction The story revolves around ...

fields.

Production

On April 22, 2009, BW Offshore and Petrobras let up the first crude oil from test well at Tupi field. The celebration ceremony for the beginning of production was held aboard the ''BW Cidade de Sao Vicente'' floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) on May 1, 2009. The president was expected to visit, but did not show up. The first producing well was expected to provide output of while the second well was expected to produce . By 2020, Petrobras expects to produce up to . Full field development may include up to 300 producing and injector wells, with total gross oil production reaching and of gas. The drilling of the first 15 wells has cost $1 billion. It is estimated that the total field cost will come to $50–$100 billion owing to the complexity of the geological formation. Up to 12 FPSOs may be needed for full production at Tupi. The field produced 100,000 barrels a day (January 2013). The field produced and of gas in 2021. The field was producing 764,000 barrels per day during the first eight months of 2024. Daily crude output returned to previous year’s level in August, reaching 830,000 bpd, following the end of a planned maintenance on a platform

References

External links