“Parnaíba Basin – The Awakening of a Giant”

The Parnaíba Basin is located in a considered exploratory frontier area, in the Brazilian Northeastern Region. The basin has about 600.000km² with a sedimentary section reaching approximately 3.500m thickness in its depocenter (Fig. 1). The Parnaíba Basin returned to the oil exploratory scenery after two decades without activities, with the discovery of two gas fields, two other accumulations in delimitation stage and significant hydrocarbons shows in recent drilled wells. The Gavião Real and Gavião Azul fields are now under production development phase, and the Bom Jesus and Fazenda Torrão accumulations are being evaluated by field delimitation phase. These discoveries are the result of an aggressive investment plan and innovative exploratory vision of OGX Petróleo e Gás S. A., acting with MPX Energia S. A. and Petra Energia S. A. in seven blocks and with MPX Energia S. A. and Imetame-Delp-Orteng Consortium in one block, as partnerships, breaking old paradigms toward Paleozoic basins. Using 2D and 3D seismic data, acquired in record time, and incorporating new ideas and alternative geological models has resulted in great success to the basin so far. The great number of mapped leads to be drilled in the future, based in the updated seismic interpretation, points out an expressive hydrocarbon potential in the Parnaíba Basin increasing OGX’s portfolio by far.