The world’s heavy crude resources are generally younger than conventional oils, and were also originally light. They’ve become heavy – viscous – because the cap rock over the reservoir hasn’t formed a complete seal.

That’s allowed bacteria to penetrate and consume the light components. A lot has also drained away or quite simply evaporated, leaving only the heavier compounds.

Peregrino is an example. Located in just over 100 metres of water 85 kilometres off Rio de Janeiro, it’s one of our largest international fields and our biggest project as operator outside Norway.

We can recover a lot of oil there. And when today’s target has been reached, we may have developed technology which allows us to get out even more.

Using technology innovatively

We’re among the absolute front runners for applying technology. That’s because our oil and gas resources have always presented major challenges.

Peregrino is no exception. We’ll be combining technology and solutions which have been developed elsewhere to achieve a profitable production solution for this field.

Its resources are located about 2,300 metres beneath the seabed. To reach that depth, we’re using the same horizontal drilling techniques we’ve applied in such locations as the Grane heavy oil field in the North Sea. These allow us to drill a number of wells from the same position, while greatly improving field drainage.

A total of 30 horizontal oil producers and seven injection wells are due to be drilled on Peregrino from two platforms, with a ship placed between them to receive and process the wellstreams.

Because it’s so heavy and viscous, oil will flow less easily than water through the Peregrino reservoir. The wellstream will therefore contain a high proportion of water, with substantial treatment capacity needed to deal with it.

Heating the wellstream in huge tanks on the production ship will make it easier to separate out the water, which will then be pumped back to the reservoir. That maintains pressure and helps to draw oil with it back to the production wells.

This solution means we not only take care of the produced water but also succeed in recovering far more of the heavy oil than usual.