Energy Sources
Oil
From oil exploration and production to product marketing, we work with creativity and technological daringness
Petroleum is a natural fossil oil that has long been the industrialized society’s main energy input. In fact, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), global consumption hovers around 85.43 million barrels per day.
Indispensible in the modern world, oil is used, by and large (90%), as fuel. But it is also present in several products that are part of our daily life, such as rubber, plastics, chewing gum, fertilizers, lipstick, and paint, among many others.
Exploration & Production
Finding oil, an energy resource that took millions of years to be formed, is a task that requires knowledge and technology both, in addition to huge investments, boldness, and creativity.
In spite of the huge challenge it represents, and of all of the geological complexity, we find oil and gas both on and offshore, in several Brazilian sedimentary basins, and we extend our exploratory frontiers to other countries too. We have registered an index of success that is above the global average, in which for each 100 exploratory wells, 20 show good results.
In more than 50 years, we have accumulated an oil and natural gas reserve that adds up to 15 billion barrels of oil equivalent and we produce in excess of 1,900,000 barrels of oil per day. Most of this oil, some 87%, comes from offshore fields, where our most advanced oil production technologies are tested and improved.
Downstream
To be turned into the fuels that are marketed to the consumers, crude oil lifted from the wells goes through the refinery, where it is submitted to several physical and chemical processes to derive the products that are indispensible to our daily life, such as naphtha, solvents, gasoline, aviation kerosene, diesel fuel, lubricants, paraffin, etc.
The long path that must be trailed to reach the final consumer does not end at the refinery. The process involves an integrated logistics system that requires investments in infrastructure, technology, and safety. Transpetro is in charge of our oil, gas, and ethanol transportation activities.
To keep technologically updated, we improve our downstream activities at all times, seeking to attend to the derivative market’s growth, to the fuel quality demands, to people’s safety, to export possibilities, and to environmental cares. Our goal is to invest, by 2020, R$29.6 billion in the Downstream area.
Distribution
Our products reach our consumers via an enormous oil derivative distribution network that involves a complex structure to receive, store and distribute products composed of terminals, bases, warehouses, and plants.
Petrobras Distribuidora is the subsidiary that is in charge of this important stage. The company holds the leadership in the Brazilian oil derivative distribution market and has been expanding its presence in Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It also has Latin America’s biggest lubricant factory.
Petrochemicals
The petrochemical industry is one of the modern industrial system’s pillars. Petrochemical products have been replacing, with several advantages, a large amount of raw materials, such as wood, glass, cotton, metals, cellulose and even inputs of animal origin, such as wool, leather, and ivory. It is possible to find products of petrochemical origin in nearly all industrial items the population consumes, such as packages, shoes, toys, tires and appliances.
We perform in the petrochemical sector via our Petroquisa subsidiary, Brazil’s main vendor of naphtha to the first generation producers in Brazil.
And it is petrochemicals that one can find the biggest individual project in our company’s history. Investments foreseen for the Rio de Janeiro Petrochemical Complex, in Brazil, are expected to be in excess of $8.38 billion. Expected to go online in 2012, the Comperj will drive the installation of consumption good industries and is expected to create 212,000 direct and indirect jobs.