Brazil’s Petrobras Oil Sales up slightly in Fourth Quarter

Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras has said its total sales volumes grew slightly in the last three months of 2022, up 0.6% from a year earlier.

Reuters reports that Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as the company is formally known, sold 3.07 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day during last year’s fourth quarter, according to data from a securities filing.

The slight bump in quarterly oil sales volumes was mainly driven by a 13.1% rise in exports during the quarter, compared to the same three-month period in the previous year. However, Petrobras’ total 12-month exports in 2022 slid 12% compared to total 2021 shipments, the data showed.

For all of 2022, Petrobras sales volume averaged 3.03 million barrels per day, 0.3% below the figure recorded for the previous year.

The firm had previously said that for all of 2022 it produced a daily average of about 2.68 million boe of crude and natural gas, surpassing its own target of 2.6 million boe.

Refinery utilisation rates came in at 86%, compared with 88% in the previous quarter.

Petrobras to hire four offshore drilling rigs

In another recent development, Petrobras launched a tender to hire up to four offshore drilling rigs equipped with a dynamic positioning (DP) system. 

The tender documents are available on Petrobras’ procurement website Petronect.

The auction is split into three lots. The first calls for chartering up to two high-specification rigs capable of operating in waters 3,048m deep, while the second and third lots involve one rig each for depths of 2,400m. 

Services will begin between March and November 2024 for the first and second lots, and between January and November of the same year for the third lot. 

The contracts will have a duration of 1,095 days, with the possibility of an extension for the same number of days.