Amid a scenario in which global oil supply faces challenges caused by the war in Iran, Brazil set a record for oil and gas production in March.

In the same month, coinciding with the beginning of the war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on Iran and Lebanon, Brazil produced 5.531 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d), surpassing the previous record of 5.304 million boe/d set in February.

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The pre-salt layer, where wells produce at depths of about 2,000 meters below the water’s surface, accounts for 79.9 percent of Brazilian production.

Boe is a unit of measurement that standardizes the volume of natural gas and oil by converting gas to the energy equivalent of a barrel of crude oil, allowing production figures to be aggregated.

The production data were released on Monday (4) by the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), the sector’s regulatory body linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

Petrobras announced that on the May 1 public holiday it began operations at the P-79 oil and gas production platform in the Búzios Field, in the Santos Basin, off Brazil’s Southeast coast.

The company noted it was able to bring forward the start of operations by three months.

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• Petrobras begins operations on P-78 platform in Búzios Field.

The facility has the capacity to produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day and compress 7.2 million cubic meters (m³) of gas daily. The platform is an FPSO (Floating Production, Storage and Offloading) vessel.

The P-79 is the eighth platform in operation in the Búzios Field. With this addition, production in the field will rise to approximately 1.33 million barrels of oil per day.

The operation is planned to export gas to the mainland via the Rota 3 gas pipeline. It will add up to 3 million cubic meters (m³) of gas per day to the country’s supply.

The platform was completed in South Korea and reached Brazil in February. It arrived with a Petrobras team on board to begin assembly and commissioning procedures, in order to accelerate the start of production.

The same process had already been carried out with the P-78, also located in the Búzios Field, which began operations in December 2025.

Búzios

P-79 forms part of the so-called Búzios 8, an oil production module that includes 14 wells, 8 of which are production wells and 6 are injection wells - used to maintain reservoir pressure and push the oil toward the production wells. In addition to the P-79, seven other platforms operate in the Búzios Field.

Discovered in 2010, the Búzios Field has the largest oil reserves in the country. Last year, it surpassed 1 million barrels of oil produced per day.

Búzios is located 180 kilometers off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, with the reservoir lying at a depth of 2,000 meters.

Petrobras plans to add four platforms to the field in the coming years. Three of them are already under construction (P-80, P-82, and P-83), and the fourth is in the bidding process.

Oil and gas production in Búzios is carried out by a consortium in which the Brazilian state-owned company is the operator. The other members are the Chinese companies CNOOC and CNODC, and Pré-Sal Petróleo S/A (PPSA), a federal state-owned company representing the Brazilian government.