The operational license was a precedent condition for the closing of the $1.38bn deal between 3R Petroleum and Petrobras announced last year
IBAMA grants operational license of three fields in Potiguar basin to 3R Petroleum. (Credit: C Morrison from Pixabay)
3R Petroleum has secured operational license for the Ubarana, Ubarana Oeste, and Cioba fields in the Potiguar basin in Brazil from the country’s environmental agency Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (IBAMA).
The operational license was a precedent condition for the closing of the deal between 3R Petroleum and Petrobras announced last year. Under the $1.38bn deal, 3R Petroleum’s fully-owned subsidiary 3R Potiguar will acquire Petrobras’ Potiguar basin assets.
3R Petroleum is a publicly-traded Brazilian company, which is involved in redeveloping mature fields and fields in production.
Ubarana, Ubarana Oeste, and Cioba are three of the 22 fields that make up the Potiguar cluster involved in the transaction.
The cluster is made up of the Canto do Amaro, Alto do Rodrigues, and Ubarana subclusters. It includes three offshore concessions and 19 onshore concessions situated in Rio Grande do Norte.
According to Petrobras, the cluster also provides 3R Petroleum access to infrastructure for oil and natural gas processing, refining, logistics, storage, transportation, and offloading. These include the Clara Camarão refinery in Guamaré, which has an installed refining capacity of 39,600 barrels of oil per day (bpd).
The Ubarana subcluster concessions are present in shallow waters, located 10-22km off the coast of Guamaré. The Canto do Amaro and Alto do Rodrigues subclusters are located onshore.
Petrobras previously stated that the sale aligns with its portfolio management strategy and the enhanced allocation of its capital with an aim to maximise value and provide greater return to society.
Recently, Petrobras made a hydrocarbon discovery through the drilling of the 3-BRSA-1387D-SPS exploratory well in the pre-salt area of the Aram block in the Santos Basin, offshore Brazil.