Carcará was discovered by Petrobras on Santos basin concession block BM-S-8 in 2012.

“We estimate that there is a volume of about 2.2 billion barrels in place on the uncontracted area of Carcará,” said Eliane Petersohn, licensing superintendent from Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP), in a special session on exploration at Rio Oil & Gas.

At least half of the Carcará reservoir appears to extend onto open acreage.

Pre-salt fields such as Carcará have a recovery factor of around 30%, although the ANP has not made an official estimate of recoverable reserves in the area. “It depends on conditions of permeability and porosity,” Petersohn explained.

This is one of four “unitisable” areas that Brazilian authorities are planning to offer to the market in a licensing round planned for 2017.

As all of these areas are in the pre-salt polygon, they will be offered as production-sharing contracts, according to Brazilian law.

Petrobras has already signaled that it will waive priority rights to take a 30% operating stake in any of the four areas.

A Statoil-led consortium seems likely to emerge with a competitive bid for the open area of Carcará, as the Norwegian company has already agreed to buy up Petrobras’ 66% stake in BM-S-8. The other areas to be offered are Tartaruga Mestiça, Gato do Mato and Sapinhoá.

Carcará is graded at 31 degrees API, and the reservoir has an abundance of highly pressurised gas.

The other partners on the existing concession are Galp Energia’s Petrogal unit (14%), Barra Energia (10%) and Queiroz Galvão Exploration & Production (10%).

Statoil has recently set up a special team to study gas solutions for fields in Brazil including Carcara, which unlike other pre-salt giants such as Lula and Libra is too highly pressurized to allow re-injection.