OREANDA-NEWS. June 14, 2011. Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) christened on June 3 the P-56 semisubmersible production unit at the BrasFELS Shipyard, in Angra dos Reis in Brazil. The USD 1.5 billion unit will produce oil and associated gas from Marlim Sul Module 3 in the Campos basin, about 120 km off Brazil.

Petrobras expects production from the field to start in August after P-56 undergoes testing and final adjustments. Petrobras signed the construction agreement for the unit with Keppel FELS and Technip in October 2007.

P-56 will be anchored in 1,670 m of water and be connected to 10 producing and 11 injection wells. The unit can accommodate 70 risers. The designed production capacity of the unit is 100 million bo/d and 6 million cu m/day of gas. The hull of P-56 was built entirely in Brazil and the topsides have a 72.9% Brazilian content. P-51, with an identical design to P-56, was the first unit built entirely in Brazil.

P-56 weighs a total 54,685 tons and is 125 m long, 110 m wide, and 137 m high. The unit will accommodate 200 people. P-56 has a modular construction that includes the deck box and hull modules. Keppel FELS assembled the four process and utilities modules at the BrasFELS shipyard. The process modules include:

• Two power generation modules (100 Mw) built by Rolls Royce in association with UTC Engenharia at UTC's site in Niteroi, Brazil. • Two compression modules built by Nouvo Pignone (GE) at the Porto Novo Rio site in Rio de Janeiro.

The deck box was also built at BrasFELS, where the modules were integrated. Mating of the topsides and hull occurred in October 2010. A pipeline will transport produced oil from P-56 about 20 km to the P-38 floating production, storage, and offloading vessel and another line will take the gas 15 km to the P-51 semisubmersible production unit.