French supermajor TotalEnergies has started production at its Lapa South-West development in the Santos Basin, 300 kilometers offshore Brazil.
The company announced on March 11 that the project adds 25,000 barrels per day to output from the Lapa field. TotalEnergies operates the project with a 48% interest, alongside Repsol Sinopec Brazil with 25% and Shell with 27%.
The development includes three wells tied back to the existing Lapa floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO).
TotalEnergies said the project, “including three wells connected to the existing Lapa FPSO unit, will increase production from the Lapa field by 25,000 barrels per day.”
The development represents an investment of approximately $1 billion.
Nicolas Terraz, President of Exploration and Production at TotalEnergies, said the start-up strengthens the company’s position in the country.
“The start-up of our operated Lapa South-West project marks another important milestone for TotalEnergies in Brazil, a key growth country for our company,” Terraz said.
He added that the development uses existing infrastructure to support cost and emissions performance. “This project, which leverages the available capacity of the existing Lapa facilities, delivers low cost and low emission oil production in line with our company strategy and contributes to the achievement of our objective to grow our production by 3% per year until 2030.”
Discovered in 2007, the Lapa field is situated in the BM-S-9 block, which was split into two sub-blocks following the discovery of Sapinhoá. The Lapa field’s full commercial production started in late 2016 through the 100,000 b/d FPSO Cidade de Caraguatatuba MV27.
The start-up follows the launch of the Mero-4 project in May 2025. TotalEnergies said additional developments are planned in Brazil, including Atapu-2 and Sépia-2 expected to start production in 2029.
