French integrated energy company TotalEnergies announced on Sunday first oil production from the fourth development phase of the Mero-4 field on the Libra block in the pre-salt are of the Santos Basin, Brazil. This start up brings total production rates to a capacity of  770,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) through five Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading (FPSO) units. Once reaching full capacity, TotalEnergies will attain  around 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d).

The Mero-4 phase, launched in August 2021, connects 12 wells to the Alexandre de Gusmão FPSO unit, which has a production capacity of 180,000 bbl/d.

“The start up of Mero-4 marks the end of the development of this world-class field, with the commissioning of four FPSOs in three years, and the start of a long-term production phase generating robust free cash flow. This is a great achievement for the Libra consortium [a group of energy companies collaborating on the development of the Libra oil field in Brazil’s Santos Basin] and  a major milestone for TotalEnergies in Brazil, a key growth country for our company, said Nicolas Terraz, President of Exploration and Production at TotalEnergies.

The project has been designed to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, with the re-injection of the associated gas into the reservoir and zero routine flaring, TotalEnergies noted.

“With its vast resources and high productivity, the Mero field delivers low-cost and low-emission oil production in line with our company strategy and contributes significantly to the achievement of our objective to grow our production by 3% per year between 2024 and 2030,” Terraz said.

It is worth noting that, Mero is a unitized field operated by Petrobras (38.6%) in partnership with TotalEnergies (19.3%), Shell Brasil (19.3%), CNPC (9.65%), CNOOC (9.65%), and Pré-Sal Petróleo S.A. (PPSA) (3.5%), representing the government in the non-contracted area.