Equinor Brasil said Valaris started the drilling campaign for the Raia project on Tuesday (24), on behalf of the consortium partners. The Valaris DS-17 drillship is scheduled to drill six wells in the pre-salt area of the Campos Basin.
Raia is one of Brazil’s main natural gas projects. Equinor operates the development with a 35% interest, alongside Repsol Sinopec Brasil with 35% and Petrobras with 30%. The project holds recoverable natural gas and oil/condensate reserves of more than 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent and has capacity to export 16 million cubic metres of natural gas per day.
Veronica Coelho, president of Equinor in Brazil, said Raia reflects the company’s record of pioneering projects in the country. She added that the project is moving closer to its goal of contributing about 15% of Brazil’s national gas demand in 2028, when operations are due to begin.
The development concept is based on production through wells connected to an FPSO, which will separate the produced oil/condensate and gas and prepare them for sale. The gas will be exported through a 200 km pipeline linking the FPSO to Cabiúnas, in the municipality of Macaé, Rio de Janeiro state.
The drilling campaign is taking place about 200 km offshore in water depths of around 2,900 m. The Valaris DS-17 is an ultra-deepwater drillship capable of operating in depths of more than 3,600 m. The rig also took part in the drilling campaign for Bacalhau, an Equinor-operated field in the Santos Basin that started production in October of the previous year.
Raia is Equinor’s largest international investment, totalling about $9 billion. The project’s FPSO is also expected to rank among the world’s most efficient in carbon intensity terms, with average CO₂ emissions of about 6 kg per barrel of oil equivalent.
The project is expected to create up to 50,000 direct and indirect jobs over its full life cycle. Raia is also part of the federal government’s Novo PAC programme.
