Brazilian oil and gas firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), or Petrobras, aims to start pilot production from its mammoth Tupi oil find in October, a company official said Thursday.

The floating storage, production and offloading, or FPSO, vessel has just passed Cape Town in South Africa on its way to Rio de Janeiro , Petrobras engineer Kazuioshi Minami told the Rio Oil and Gas conference.

The ultra-deep-water Tupi field in the Santos basin was discovered in November 2007, and is estimated to hold recoverable reserves of between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent, making it the largest discovery in the Americas since Mexico 's Cantarell nearly three decades ago.

Minami said the converted tanker will be connected to five production wells at Tupi.

Daily production capacity on the FPSO is 100,000 barrels of crude oil and five million cubic meters of natural gas, he said.

Natural gas will be sent to the Mexilhao platform via a pipeline, and then to the Brazilian coast, he said.

Longer term, Petrobras is considering building an oil pipeline to transport crude from the mammoth Santos presalt fields to the Brazilian coast, Minami said.

The long-term well test at Tupi will end as the FPSO comes online, he said. The test lasted for 15 months and is currently producing about 14,000 barrels of oil per day, Minami said.
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