Hello, good afternoon. I'm Roberta, our coordinator. I would like to welcome everyone. Welcome to PRIO Day 2025. Since this auditorium has limited seating, there are a lot of people with us online as well. At the end, we will have a Q&A for those of you who are here in person. That's it. Thank you very much.
[Foreign language]
HRT was created with a big dream. W e started a company taking a lot of risk with no support. T he first thing we did was to sit here for one whole day looking at the contract and renegotiating the terms of the contract. I think barrel price was like $22. This is a protection you have to have with low oil prices. The need for survival and the need for it to work is what really, you know, molded us. Another transaction we did was the acquisition of a company called Brasoil in the Manati Field, and this has proven to be a very sound investment. How do you feel? How do you make people feel like they're owners? Well, that's when they acquire shares.
They surf the wave with all of us. People start thinking as owners, to think outside the box.
We are already operating with a high degree of security. We had good results, but we hadn't done something that was quite important for a large company, so when the well started to work, nobody believed that it went into production. I think we were able to increase production by 40%. I mean, the company was sound. It was a safe company, and the company demonstrated a sound capacity to execute. Polvo at the time produced 10,000 barrels and Frade 17. W e were almost tripling the size of the company.
There was a restriction in terms of PRIO's capacity to operate a platform, so to build up this credibility is something that happened due to a lot of work, and because without that, it would be impossible to grow at the pace we grew, then 2020 came, and it was a very challenging year, very, very challenging. We acquired insurance against the drop in oil prices because, you know, the whole scenario changed, the budgets changed. W e prepared the company for a stress scenario because of COVID-19. I mean, that was the best year of the company when compared to the other years. TBMT.
From the very beginning, we already envisioned that Polvo and TBMT would walk hand in hand. The main challenge was the migration to promote the integration of the new employees and also make everything work in a very quick period of time. It's an independent company. So it was very difficult for us to make a decision to remove a FPSO and then move it to another field. It's not a trivial thing. If you look at our trajectory now, okay, now that I master this, now I can grow this other part.
Due to the Marcet need, PRIO started to look for other options to acquire rigs, rigs, because we didn't want to be surprised by the lack of assets in future fields, so then we had a maturity that came to our teams. We evolved to subsea wells, and then we are now looking at this as a preseason for Wahoo, and then we will leave Series A thinking that we are Champions League, so if you run a checklist of all of the assets that PRIO looks for, like Albacora Leste, fits perfectly into all of them. Our major challenge was to get a very downgraded plant and then put 100% of our new employees to operate that plant.
Not only were we able to control our trading chain, but also we generated and created options and more opportunities to make more money based on our production. We concluded an acquisition that we had been pursuing for many years. Peregrino had two partners, Equinor with 60%, and Sinochem with 40%. We went to China more than once to talk to them and to be more familiar with them. T hat took a lot of effort because it's not everywhere that anyone could acquire Peregrino from Equinor. I t was just like buying a new PRIO. The Wahoo project is the next largest, a chievement of PRIO.
A s with any achievement, it's not easy. When we look at the first oil, the first oil was greatly anticipated, and this will be like a seal that attests to the success of everything that we have achieved. You're drilling in deep waters, and your tieback is much bigger than what we had before. It would be like the path towards the future. The future, nobody knows what's coming. But now we see other and better opportunities when compared to what we had in the past. I think we are going now to experience our golden years. It's going to take us to the future, people, results, et cetera.
[Foreign language]
Hello, everyone. My name is Nelson Queiroz. I'm chairman of PRIO's board and one of the people who helped build the company. For starters, I know that there are many partners of the company, people who are there working every day, some of them here in person and some online, and then investor funds. You don't work at the company, but you believe in us, you invest in us. You are partners just like us. Many of you are managing third-party resources and assets from other people. That's a responsibility that we take very seriously, as seriously as we take our own assets.
To get started, this very cool video we showed you shows a little over the last 10 years of the company. Perhaps one of PRIO's strengths is that you saw many faces. Every time, every step, there was a different person narrating.
T hat's what we're going to have today. Some people will focus on the operational part and other parts. And we believe a lot in our operations. We have an important technical knowledge, but there's also what we do with the technical knowledge, your attitude, your spirit, your alignment, your long-term vision. That's something that we have always focused on from the start, and undoubtedly, it is one of our main strengths. But PRIO was born in 2015, a little over 10 years. Over the last 10 years, a lot happened. We started with one field, Polvo. And Polvo field started with a very challenging future.
Polvo produced 6,000 barrels. Oil price was really low, but then the seller of the field, an excellent company called BP, with which we have an excellent relationship, well, they did not believe in the future of the field. Of course, oil prices were melting. Brazil was going through a huge crisis, mainly both large companies and small companies were suffering. That's when we started PRIO. We know PRIO's story. If PRIO was going to begin today, if we were going to begin another company today, and if we started with Polvo, which actually worked really well, it was a foundation for us to build something solid.
Who would believe that that base would be sufficient for us to build anything? The seller didn't believe in the field. Oil prices were down. Essentially, the question is, how did we go from a field with a short lifespan, a company they used to call HRT, that had all kinds of issues, operating problems, financial problems, a cultural issue? H ow can you get that foundation, that one field, and make it into something that makes you proud? I'll get to that. And part of that answer is our culture. What we did is we enhanced our culture, good people, aligned people. Producing oil at any cost is not good business.
That's kind of evident, kind of obvious, but it's something we pursued from the start. In order to produce oil, mainly offshore, we have to have a high return on investment. S ince the beginning, when we look at any M&A deal, any well, anything we do, we always focused a lot on that, on producing oil with profitability. And we had good people, aligned people. Decisions are made not for the short term, but for the long term. I t's what we are building. We have to be prepared if oil prices fall. W e hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Over the last 10 years, among many highlights that make a big difference, everyone at PRIO from the beginning, most of the people at the top as well, myself, Roberto, Francilmar, Milton, many others, we were here at the beginning when no one believed at the company, no one believed in the company. And when I asked you about Polvo, well, people thought that there was no future there. But some people believed, based on the math, on the strategy, on the technique, well, we continue at the company until today. Of course, there was evolution, there was improvement. We listened to one another.
We learned from experience, from other people's lessons learned. But the method is 100% the same. People at the company are mostly the same people. Meanwhile, in the last 10 years, we faced all kinds of difficulties. If you're Brazilian, we face difficulties all the time, and when you take a longer period of time, a lot of problems happen. The oil prices melted. We had the truck drivers strike, then we had COVID. IBAMA started a strike two years ago.
We were in the middle of a big project for us called Wahoo, and when we had made most of the investment and we were able to bring the project online, that Friday, Ibama decided to go on strike, and that's the kind of reality we have to deal with. Oil now is costing about $62. Two years ago, it was double that price. It was $120 two years ago. We started this year at $75, so how do we navigate all that? On one hand, it's about doing the math and preparing for the worst, doing stress tests for everything. If we have lower production, higher cost, lower price of oil, you have to plan for adverse scenarios.
Y ou don't have any hope. It's just a waste of time. And what we always do is stress testing. If everything goes badly, we remain standing. So when some things are off track, we can stand it. It's not what we want. It's not the ideal scenario, but we are ready to face the hardships. And we're also ready to face things when they are doing really well. I spoke a little about discipline. Something we always do, having a lot of technical capacity, which is what we're going to discuss today, is capital allocation.
We have one single goal here, as important as, if not more important than producing efficiently, which is creating value. A company that stands the loss dies. A profitable company creates value. Either we cut down costs, but we have to make sure that money will be well spent and create value in the future. Or if we want to create value, investing in a well, in a tieback, in an improvement in trading, whatever it is. So we have a very clear vision of creating value and capital of the right capital allocation. Along those lines, in 10 years, we had a reasonable number of deals.
Come to think of it, we have now six deals in total, not to mention all the sales we had in the beginning. We had a lot of legacy assets from HRT, so we had a big number of transactions, deals. H ere, I think that we said more no's than yeses. We had opportunities to double the size of the company in terms of barrels, but not in terms of cash flow. S ince we were really small with a big dream, until now, it's a clear approach to create capital and create value and have capital allocation. I t was the first time we said no to something we liked. Just like a good asset at a bad price is bad business.
A good asset at the wrong time is not good business either. W e had a good opportunity, but it was not the right timing. C apital allocation always guides us. C oming to the end of my initial remarks, we always listen to the market. From the start until now, we'll continue to listen to the market. Something we will announce in the beginning of next year is a shareholder remuneration plan. We are preparing a study that we will present sometime next year, more towards the first quarter, perhaps second quarter, as soon as it is ready.
E ssentially, it is a plan structured so that if some criteria are met, the company will start paying dividends, resume the share buyback. And this plan has some components that we are assessing. Number one, cash position, a solid balance sheet in case the oil prices drop. Cash works for if oil prices are down, we have more flexibility. We have a covenant for our obligations, our bonds, etc. So we always have a big safety margin. Just like for M&A deals, we always have to be ready. When a good opportunity arises, we have to have the ability to act.
T his is something that we are going to speak more about in the beginning to mid next year. I t has to do with capital allocation. E ven M&As, again, the M&A that I mentioned, it was a good deal, but in the wrong time. S ometimes if you add too much, you may lose in execution. W e're always ready to create value. W e'll create even more value if things are doing well. I f things are not so good, we'll just create a little bit less value. T here are a couple of things I would like to mention. One of them is a lot of people believe in the company have been with us for a long time, invested in us when no one believed in us. The first PRIO internship had 10 slots in 2015.
Only three applicants came to apply to work for the company. It was a difficult moment. The company was really small, facing difficulties. No one believed in us. No one wanted to invest their time or money in us. S ome people did that, myself, Roberto, Francilmar, and a lot of people who remained with us. And somehow, after a first decade of life, we achieved a lot. We faced a lot of difficulties. We evolved. We learned from our mistakes, with the lessons learned from other people. But there's something that excites me. I think that the next decade will be better than the first. The first decade had a lot of challenges, a lot of lessons learned. We had to get the cultural fit, the method right.
The second decade, if when we had very little, we were able to do a lot. Now that the company has a lot more tools and the spirit remains, if with little, we did a lot, with a lot, we'll do even more. It's the same guide. Our mindset is the same. Our dream to continue to create value is the same. When we started with 6,000 barrels, we dreamed of 100,000. 100,000 was never the finish line. It was just a point far enough to be challenging, but that we could still envision. It took us eight and a half years to exceed 100,000 barrels for the first time. Well, to 100,000 will take about three years and a half after we achieved the 100,000.
I believe that 300,000 will not take much longer, but always following the same rules of creating value.
Growing for the sake of growing is bad business. Buying a field at the wrong price is bad business. And doing a good business at the wrong time can be bad business. We are here for long-lasting deals that will generate more cash for us to invest in other deals, and so on and so forth. Now, to truly come to an end, I will ask you, I want to show you this. You don't have to worry if you cannot read it from where you're sitting. If you read what's written here on the slide and on the following slide, it talks about the vision of the company and how we had this vision of creating value, of always evolving.
Increased financial discipline, coupled with a sound decision to cut costs, which is super important. Cost is what you control. If the oil price drops, you don't control that, but you control your costs. The best hedging is having a low lifting cost because it will help you in the hard times. Coupled with a sound decision to cut costs implemented since the beginning of 2014, allowed the company to be better positioned to face the drop in oil prices. I'm not going to ask a rhetorical question of when you think this was said, but this slide. Let's move to the next two slides. Next one, please. This is the same.
Our commitment to safety and environment is one of our core values. The year 2014 was marked by major challenges and important achievements for the company, culminating in proof of our vocation. We focus on safety, sustainable results, culture. Next.
This last one, we ended, therefore, the year delivering on the pillars of our growth strategy: low operating costs, excellent operating efficiency, redevelopment of mature fields, and the position of producing assets. Our business model has been carefully followed. I am sure that you know when this was. This was not set this year. It could be. It's not last year. This is 10 years ago, 2015, 2016, 2017. T hey apply as much today as they applied in the past, and they will apply in 5 to 10 years because that's how we built this company. That's how we will continue to build it. What brought us this far is what will take us forward.
Now, to an end, this cultural side of behaviors, the things that are necessary, what people do when no one is seeing, how we treat one another, that makes a big difference in our personal lives. That's super important. Treating people as you would like to be treated, just like professionally. This is the pillar sustaining everything we do. We have to say the right thing and do the right thing. Our values are essential, and they are core for all the new hires. We were a company of 80 people. Now we have more than 1,000. When we include third parties, even more. What you will get at the end of the day is a manifest of PRIO's culture. This manifest is online if you're not present here. It was carefully worded with everything that we believe in, all of the, all of our values, our behaviors.
It's a manifesto that is a living organism. Some people, even before they join PRIO, they have good values. They think in a way aligned with us, and they think about creating value. When somebody gets here and they're ready and they just add to the team, wonderful, but if you are with the company for one year or 10 years, it's the same rule for everyone. We wrote a manifesto. It's something that we are going to be working more and more with the company, so we've always worked with this, and we will make this manifesto more and more explicit, and at any time, if you want to get to know us, if you want to know how we think, the manifesto will be available.
I hope you will agree with what's written there. We learned with other companies and other people how it works and what we identify ourselves with, s o kind of that's what I had. A good company is a company where people working there have their investments there. When people have the option, they choose our stock option program. Our stock option program is coming to an end, and we have more than 90% of the company's headcount in the program. More than half chose 100% of their variable pay in stock. We pay the stock over a three-year period. One year without pay, and then there's a letter.
There's a three and five-year program, and there's always a longer wait at the end. If the company performs and if people perform, the incentive is renewed. It's always long term. There will be no shortcuts. We'll never make a decision thinking about the coming quarter, investment of the next year or decade. Our track record is here to show that even with a lot of challenges and difficulties, the company remains stronger, so for the investors who are here, you believe in the company, thank you.
If you believe in the company, if your assets are together with my assets, my whole wealth is with the company, Roberto's as well, Francilmar's as well, and every year we renew our investment. You can rest assured that our thoughts, technique, and with our strategy and planning will always be 100% aligned with creating value. Thank you. I'd like to call Roberto, our CEO.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon, everyone. Well, I'll be very brief, and then I will give the floor to Francilmar. Today is a day focused on the operation.
The only non-operational is Gustavo, who will speak about trading. But our idea is to give you more detail on our operations. Nelson spoke about our history, and I would like to highlight the year 2025, which was, in my opinion, fundamental for the company in the sense that the company became a lot stronger, the company became a lot more robust. Many of you were our shareholders, continue to be, and you know that 2024 was not a good year. Part due to exogenous factors and part due to things that we were not responsible for, IBAMA strike, but we also had our Peregrino that did not produce and deliver as we expected.
In 2025, we kind of dwelled into the company. We turned inward, and this has been a more introspective year, as Nelson said. We let go of two M&A opportunities this year.
One of them was interesting, the other one not so much, but one of them was where we said, it's not the right timing. We already had the deal, the Peregrino deal, a big deal. The moment now is to stop, look inside, in-house, and solve the 2024 pending issues and start delivering, generating capital and cash so that we can start 2026 with the possibility of dividend payout, and this was our goal for 2025, and I guess that considering the difficulties posed during the year, I think that we came out at the end quite well. We finally had the closing of Peregrino.
Yes, there was a 60-day downtime, but we have a claim against Equinor, most likely, and that will be resolved, but we were able to bring forward the deal. We are already capturing synergies. Production is doing well. We were able to unlock Wahoo. All of the problems of 2024 were solved. Now everything is in our hands. More importantly, when we talk about looking in, we were able to renew our vows. We were able to renew our vows. If you will remember, 2024 was not a very good year. In the beginning of 2025, we did not have the bonus. It was like a slight retention. We paid 30% of our total bonuses paid in 2023. We paid just 30% in 2024.
In 2025, referring to 2024, a lot of people left the company. Some of the people we needed to replace, but we affirmed these values. PRIO, at the end of the day, means people, results, not settling, and being bold. In Portuguese, these words fit the acronym. Some of the people presenting today are the very same faces that you know, but we have a very robust team now, and all of the people reporting to us form a very robust team. Never was I so confident in the company's ability to deliver results, and in the moment we're living, we have contracted growth of 200,000 barrels a day.
Everything to get to this contracted growth is in-house. We haven't got any pending licenses. I mean, there are minor things, but no big pending issues such as an environmental license for Wahoo, which was a big, big problem, or an Equinor business that required a lot of hard work for us to close and such. And now we have a very clear vision to deleverage the company over the next year, generating cash and redistributing cash, so I'm very confident in 2026. I think that 2025 was an excellent turnaround because 2024, at the end of the day, was a difficult year. I t was a test of our culture, and it made our company stronger.
I'll end here. I'll invite Francilmar, and he will present the agenda, and he'll speak about our operations at a macro level. T hen he will invite people from his team to present the plan for next year. I'll come back for the Q&A. O bviously, if there's a pressing question, please feel free to ask, but we are going to have a Q&A question at the end. T hen I will be joining. Francilmar?
[Foreign language]
Hi everyone. Good afternoon. Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. After lunch, it's always difficult, I know. So this is our agenda for today, and I will summarize what we had, what we lived through, and what's h appening at the company.
After Nelson's and Roberto's opening remarks, I think that you understand where we stand, what we faced, and where we are now. 2025 was a very important year. It was one of those years that was a test that put us to the test. In the end of the year, we can have this retrospective, and we are coming out at the other end much stronger in a much more robust situation in terms of team structure. We enhanced a lot of structural, functional, technical points, and mainly cultural points. I think that we can let go of the ties. For a while, we had ties holding us back, but now we are free to fight with our own efforts, not really relying on external parties.
The company today, if we compare to the past, it was never this exuberant. If we look at our production data, we have three or four FPSOs, four fixed platforms operating at 100%. We have three wells being drilled at the same time, three rigs drilling at Wahoo, Polvo, and Peregrino. We have three subsea construction vessels working, laying the pipes, the subsea systems. There is a lot of operations happening. What we suffered in the last close to two years, fighting against the natural depletion of the fields without being able to replenish with new oil in the system, not anymore. Now we're back in the game.
PRIO's main strength in the last 10 years is our ability to always find a way of having one new oil offsetting the decline of another field. Now we're strong to play the game. Let me go over the agenda very quickly. Every theme will be explained by a different manager, and they will give us a more detailed vision of what's happening. But overall, we'll speak first about Peregrino. Peregrino had a very fast transition, a very intense transition. You noted we had a problem in the middle of a transition of such a big field, or that requires a lot of work, and we have to shut down.
A t Peregrino, we were in the back seat, and then we moved to the passenger seat, and then we were almost driving the car. It was really intense. As a result of that process, we took over the operation, and the initial result is very good and very promising. We have captured a lot. The synergy we had in the operation of our assets, we have a good number of assets, four assets, so it was good to have a mix. It was much smoother, and of course, we had the last learnings in the past that helped. We are going to cover the general plans for the future for the company.
Gabriel will speak about Peregrino. Peregrino, every day that goes by, Peregrino comes with many good news, and we become increasingly optimistic going forward. We will talk a little bit about Wahoo's development. Jean will give us an update. We are at 30% advance in the project. The project is moving quite well. Jean will give us more detaILTs, and then he will tell us when we should expect the first oil. In general, we say that it's between March and April, but who knows? After that, we will give you a general overview and subsurface. I will tell you about the future plans for Frade.
Frade, we did some major work done by the subsurface team with all of the information that we got from our last drilling campaign. The drilling campaign, I mean, people are getting a better understanding of the reservoirs, especially those that we went through. We will tell you a little bit more about what we expect to do in Frade in the future. Polvo will despite the fact that it was our first well, the oldest one with lowest production, but we still have some good news about it, about the new drillings.
We will also talk about Albacora Leste, ABL. In the last two, three years, we started working with the seismic data, and now we have some more updated information going forward. We will then talk about the maintenance of the assets. The main focus of the company is either to bring new oil into the system or to enhance our operating efficiency, and this is up to the maintenance team to do because they are the ones who will give us the necessary support to bring the equipment we need, and Lourenço will then talk about that, followed by Gustavo, who will tell us more about trading and how we make money with that operation, and Thiago Almeida, a newcomer, he will also give us an update on environment, security, ESG, etcetera, so with that, I will just give the floor to Gabriel that will give you more detail.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon, everyone. Okay, I'm Gabriel.
[Foreign language]
I've been with the company since 2015, the very first days.
I've been through all of the areas of the company throughout the years, and more recently, I was part of the Peregrino transition, so I participated in the effort to bring in the asset. And now I'm in charge of the southern fields, so shallow water fields like Tubarão, TBMT, and Peregrino. Now I'd just like to give you our view of Peregrino, what is the plan going forward. I will also explain about the field and what are the main challenges ahead. I don't think there is anything new here for any of you. The field is located in the southern part of the Campos Basin, in about 95 to 90 km from the coast of Cabo Frio, in Arraial do Cabo.
It's very close to Polvo. So I think it should be 25 to 30 km between platforms. There are four platforms.
One is in shallow water, so we have fixed platforms with FPSO about 100 and 110 m deep. And it's very viscous. The oil is very viscous. There are some specific challenges in terms of flowing. The material has a bit more water, so that's why this field is a bit more complex when compared to the other fields. The field was developed in two phases. It initially started with Phase I, Phase II. That's when we were given. The first oil was in 2011, this particular position. H ere, I think you can see the Bravo and Alpha platforms. FPSO is right here in the middle.
A lpha, Bravo, and FPSO was Phase I, and the second phase was in 2022 with a third platform in the southeast region with the gas pipeline already in place. I 'll talk more about it.
This is where we are working right now. I will talk about the wells. We have wells all over this extension, but the focus is more in this area. We want to develop the field, and this is where we stand right now. How the production system works, how are they connected? There are three fixed platforms with an attached rig, so we have drilling capacity. This is very similar to what we have in Polvo. They are slightly bigger, but the concept remains the same. They do not have processing capacity, so they have to pump it to FPSO, and FPSO treats the fluid. We have the subsea pipelines, and they pump it to FPSO. The FPSO treats it.
It sends the water back to the fixed platforms, and the fixed platforms then do the injection into the wells, in addition to the umbilical set and also automation. All platforms have dry completion wells, very similar to what we have in Polvo. W hen you get to the platform, you can see the Christmas tree, all of the valves, and the whole set of the Christmas tree. The reservoir has no energy to flow it immediately. So that's why we have the ESPs pumps. They have a lifespan, so on occasion, they have to be changed because sometimes they break or their maturity expires. So it's pumped as soon as it leaves the well. It leaves with water, et cetera.
Then it is treated, and then it goes back to the fixed platforms for injection. FPSO has the capacity to produce, I mean, we are producing close to capacity. It's about 110,000-100,000 barrels a day, which is the limitation of the FPSO. The field has a lot of water produced, but we're producing about 140,000 barrels of water a day, so we have plenty of capacity for water. We are just limited in terms of our oil capacity. So we can produce about 300,000 barrels. I am just bringing this here because this is one of the main jobs we have in the year.
Energy generation, it's an important thing for the field because this concentrates the bulk of our spending in the field. How does this work? There is a cable that connects the four platforms. They are connected to an energy grid that flows between them, so they all benefit from the same energy grid. Energy is generated through FPSO and Platform C on Phase II. This energy that is generated between the two platforms goes into a network, and the four platforms work based on that energy produced. FPSO has a steam turbine, so three boilers associated to a steam turbine. All of the gas that is produced by the boiler needs some diesel.
It generates energy through the FPSO. The turbines on the Platform C are very similar to what we have in FPSO. These are gas turbines, more complex ones, and they are designed to receive imported gas. It also has the capacity to burn diesel, which is the current configuration because we have no access to the gas pipeline. I will elaborate further on that, but it does use diesel. Our current consumption is about 250-260 cubic m a day.
I mean, 200 is on Platform C, and the remaining is used by FPSO that uses the associated gas. What are the main challenges? I'll talk a little bit about generation, gas pipeline, et cetera. But operationally speaking, we are able to keep a very good level of production. The field has very good efficiency, and this is the key to achieve that. So our PRIOrity is to maintain this producing well. This is not very different when compared to other assets, and I'll talk about redundancy and maintenance, but we also have to do the same thing there.
W hat are the main points of alert and equipment? Well, we do not have the same complexity with the compressors like we do have in Albacora. Here, this well is reasonably simpler, but what's very important to us is the generation system and the pumping to the platforms from FPSO. Both turbines and boilers and the ESPs have to be active, and the multi-phase pumps that pump the oil from the fixed platforms to all of the lines have to be in place. The injection pumps are also quite important to us. Integrity, we are in the middle of the sea, and we have mature assets.
I mean, Peregrino is not so mature because it's still in the peak of its production, but it's been in operation for almost 15 years. Therefore, integrity is always very important to us. We have a floatel campaign in WHP. We see some promising things starting in the Alpha period. We still want to see that evolving in the future. The field produces a lot of water. Water is important for the flow. Therefore, it's important that we strike a very good balance between the water to be able to produce and flow, but we try to prioritize the wells with the lowest BSW because we were working at a limit.
Another important aspect that Francilmar just mentioned is the knowledge that we inherited from the field. We just made a transition. The transition was quite intense, and it required a lot of effort on our part, but there was some very good thing because we were able to accommodate everyone that was working in the field. So lack of knowledge is not a risk for the field. So we inherited a lot of people with good knowledge. They are already very familiar with the field. They already know where the problems are and how they can fix it.
94% of the team that was already working in Peregrino, they are now working with us now. Everybody there already knows what to do, so what we are doing is just to bring them on board our own culture. So we will talk about the way we make things happen. They were used to a different culture because certainly every company has its own culture, so I think the main focus of our work is managing this knowledge. We were very successful once we brought people on board, but now they have to be part of our culture and how can we develop the field and maintain production at its best. For 2026, we usually say that Peregrino has to be a well machine.
We have to make a lot of wells. The fact that we have rigs connected to the platforms gives us competitive cost. For next year, we are anticipating three wells distributed among the three platforms, three producing wells, three injection wells, in addition to one producer and injector. André will talk a little bit more about it, but he is now revisiting the model so we can have our own view of the field. We are looking ahead for the 4D seismic. We are working in the 4D seismic, and there is another study about the synergies, what we can do. We're very close to Polvo and TBMT. We are trying to understand whether we can extract some synergies from the wells.
T he study is quite promising, and very soon we'll be able to tell you more about it. And there is an important point that André will mention, which is the drilling of the Isolado. There is an area here between the two phases, which is what we call Isolado. I think it's the Alpha platform, so we are anticipating a producing well here. André can shed some light on this subject about, I mean, we'll talk more about this deposit. I mean, of course, that we always have to take care of the water. Managing the water is a critical element. These are our next year wells, as I said, six wells scattered throughout the years along the three platforms.
We will also work with injection wells to ensure maintenance of the injection capacity of the field, in addition to the workovers to maintain production going. Whenever a well leaves, then we add another one, and this should bring us a potential close to the limitation of the field with an average daily production of around 100,000 barrels. This is what we envision for this field with this working plan. In addition to the wells, one of the most important aspects of the field, and I think one of the largest projects we have going forward, is the recovery of the gas pipeline. The gas pipeline connects Platform C onto Rota2.
It covers an area of about 60 km, maybe a bit less, 45 km of rigid pipes. In 2023, a vessel that had nothing to do with the operation was alongside, and this damaged the rigid and the flexibles and the manifolds. We are working to recover the system right now, and we hope that it will be online again in the second half of next year. This involves 15 km of rigid pipes. We will reposition the remaining of the line. We will lay the manifolds, and this involves a lot of complex work.
The expectation is that this will cost about $100 million, give or take, and this will be reimbursed by our insurers. This is a work in progress. Therefore, I know that Jean's team will help us with that. Then this is the main point, and I think this is probably the most important objective of the year, which is to bring Peregrino's cost to PRIO's standards, I mean, to the level of cost of PRIO. Not only do we want to keep efficiency high, this cost reduction, I think, is our main goal for the year, and the gas pipeline is probably the main project as part of this. The rest is business as usual. We already have some cost optimization. For the mere fact that our structure is lean, and we are working to optimize logistics. Therefore, the vessels that serve TBMT, they will serve Peregrino.
I mean, the same thing with the aircraft, logistics, everything is in place right now. Now we are entering the phase of contract renegotiation. In the next few months, we will renegotiate the contracts. We will look at our maintenance plans. We will reorganize our teams to bring everything up to speed. A t the end of the year, we will install the gas pipeline. A s soon as we have the return of the gas pipeline, we will bring it to our level of operation. F rom then on, we will just keep on leveling the field when it comes to high production. I think this is an old dream that the company had.
W hen I look at the field, I say, "Well, I wish one day I could work in that field." But now we are there, but that requires a lot of work. I mean, so Jean, we'll now talk about Wahoo a little bit.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon. W e will also reduce the drilling cost of the well. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jean Calvi. I've been with PRIO since 2016, so I was involved in the first pre-completion process of Polvo, Phoenix, development of Frade. N ow I will talk about Wahoo project, which is one of the most important projects of the company. This project creates a lot of value, financial value for the company, but again, it also has some intangible value, which is knowledge and boldness. W hen Roberto refers to strengthening the company, Wahoo is a clear example of that. Right at the beginning of the project, we made a decision not to close a EPCI.
That's when we hire a company to work on the scopes and execute it. It was almost like giving the key to your car to somebody else to drive it, so what we did was segmenting the project. W e segmented the scopes, and PRIO is now taking the lead. PRIO is driving the car. Once we did that, we had to look for suppliers and suppliers in the country and outside the country.
We had to look for engineering companies, develop techniques, and bring a lot of people on board, and so throughout the project, the IBAMA issue, maybe we thought that we could shift gears quickly to decrease the cost and the risk of the project, and today, we see the value that this brought to the company. We are now driving the car. Now, I will talk a little bit about the schedule and how the project is being developed. This was a very carefully orchestrated project. We waited for the license for almost a year or more, and we try to do the best we could for the company.
Francilmar said, "Well, I will start with the most important figure in this slide. Our expectation is to get the first oil between the end of March and early April. We have an internal methodology that we call P10, P50, P90. P90 is 90% probability, so this would be a more conservative scenario. P50 is the current scenario. T here is always a range in terms of complexity. T he range is about one month for delivery date. H ow are we going to deliver the project? Today, there are four vessels working in the project. We have the rig, Hunter Queen is drilling. We started back in March when we received the drilling license.
P-01 was the first drilled well, so we sent the rig to TBMT to do the workover. Then we went back to Wahoo. We finished P2 completion and drilling. These two wells are ready, and now we are P-03. P-03 is an identical well when compared to the other two, so we have 75 days for drilling. In parallel, in the same field, we have three vessels doing the subsea construction: Amazon, NO102, and Genesis. I'll elaborate on each one of them. Just as a reminder, we have the landmark of the first oil.
We call it Phase I, delivery of the project until the first oil, and then that is followed by two other Phases: the delivery of the second production line that we call the second tieback, and the delivery of the injection wells. There are two injection wells. The presentation is divided into three phases. What does Phase I mean? Phase I means all the modifications of FPSO and the pipeline of one rigid line and control umbilicals of chemicals and all of the equipment and lines that connect the production wells in the Wahoo field. Here we have the Frade field, the tieback, all of the path covered, and the Wahoo field, which is about 30 km away.
This is the scope of Phase I that will be delivered in April next year. What are we doing now? Now we have Amazon launching the rigid tieback. It's the first one launched by PRIO. We are closely monitoring the project together with McDermott. The vessel arrived in Brazil at the end of October. We had to go through a clearance process, and so far, everything is as planned.
We are moving on well. We already launched or laid 12 km, so it's been over one-third of the pipeline, so this first line, I mean, we made changes at some point in the project. We were at four PLEMs, two lines, and then we were fine-tuning the studies, so we installed three PLETs in the first 15 km of the first half of the tieback, we call it that. I n the second, we don't have PLEMs. Everything has been determined by our engineering team, so we covered two 12 km, and then the next one, we'll cover three additional km adding up to 15, and why am I saying all that? Because from now on, we will lay pipes much quicker.
When we launch ILTs, it will take a few more days, and then from now on, we should install about 1,000 m or one kilometer a day. This is the current scenario. At the end of the line, after the tieback, we will install the manifold with Amazon in the Wahoo field. When do we expect to conclude that? Well, the first week of January. The first week of January, this should be ready and in place, and the vessel will then move on to take the second line of Wahoo, and we'll lay the second line. Here I have some pictures. What does the vessel do? I mean, it's a line that lays down the pipes. It's a rigid pipe with a pipeline. In the vessel, we have a welding process.
This is a video of the vessel. It's a new vessel. It's in its fourth project. The first project was in Africa. Then he went to the Gulf, did some work for Shell. They had lots of problems with that. I think many of you knew about it. T hen he went to Africa, and the vessel was improved. T oday, this vessel has very good performance. This is the loading process. We put a QR code in all the pipes with the measurement of the pipes. The vessel selects the ideal pipes for size. They include it in the assembly line. I t transports from the loading zone. The vessel is highly automated.
There are a lot of robots embedded. H ere is the welding line, and every welding line allows us to weld six 9-meter pipes. So every line is what we call hex joint. So this is the welding process. And so after it's welded and prepared, the tower carries it up, and it lifts the pipe.
After that, it puts on a desk to weld the tube or the pipe when it's already in the water. So it's a new pipe that's arrived.
[Foreign language]
That's when we lay the pipe. The process is repeated numerous times. The first Wahoo tieback is about 1,500 pipes. We are moving quite well when it comes to pipeline. In addition to Amazon, we have NO102 that lays flexible and umbilical pipes. What is the scope of the vessel? Umbilical pipe to flexible pipes where production comes through. This umbilical carries chemicals, control fluids, and the electric part. The umbilical connects both fields, and they also promote the connections of the Christmas trees in the manifolds with flexible pipes. Where do we stand right now?
We did the pull-in, meaning that we installed the umbilical at Frade's FPSO, so it has been laid. We already laid that long control umbilical of 28 km long, and we launched three other short umbilicals in the Wahoo field, so the next scope is to launch the chemical umbilical pipes. We will lay it and connect the wells to the manifold, and then we will launch the flexible pipes connecting it to the Frade FPSO. Here we have some images of the vessel and how it works. This equipment is called carousel. We stored 30 km of umbilical pipes.
This equipment turns around and delivers the pipe to this tower, which is the launching or laying tower, and these devices on top, they hold the top of the umbilical, which is quite heavy. So the speed control is done by this equipment. Here is an illustration of our design. When I talk about pull-in, the laying vessel is very close to the FPSO. Part of the equipment, or this equipment, or this pipe comes here to the vessel. We anchor it in the vessel, and then it lays the equipment in the direction of Wahoo. T his is the loading of an umbilical pipe, just for you to have an idea of the magnitude and the size of the equipment. F inally, there is a third vessel.
This last one is like a Jack of all trades. He prepares the path for the launching of the larger vessels. So it prepares the area for the rigid pipeline. It prepares the area for the installation of umbilicals and UTAs. And today, we basically have the entire preparation in place to install the equipment that we are still lacking for the first oil. We installed everything we needed in this first vessel, so this is not a bottleneck for the first oil. Here we have some images of the work that we did. This is a Christmas tree being installed. Here we have the mouth of the well. This is the well. The sea floor is two and a half m below the structure. This is a Christmas tree.
W hen Gabriel referred to Peregrino's Christmas tree, it's in the surface. I n Wahoo, the Christmas tree is in the bottom. These are the equipment that distribute hydraulic, chemical, and electric power in the Wahoo field. Very briefly now, this is the scope of Phase II. As I said, Amazon will lay the second line. T he third Phase, Phase III, we will drill both injection wells, and we will connect these wells to the second rigid line. The second rigid line can be both producing and injection line, so if we have any positive surprise, we can redirect the manifold because the manifold directs the flow, so it can produce for both lines.
When production is down, this line could be also turned into a water injection line, so these are the things that we put in the design. Very important point about tieback. We have to have flow assurance, so we always work to make sure the production will leave one field and get to the next, and several studies are carried out, some outputs of these studies. For example, I need to keep the oil hot so that it will flow and not form hydrate. Hydrate requires gas or water and low temperature, so we install kind of a coating in the pipe based on this study.
This coating works as a prevention of hydrate formation, so hydrate will not form. In addition, we install the ILTs that I mentioned. This is equipment that will allow us to access the inner part of the pipe. If hydrate is forming, we can go to the ILTs and depressurize the pipe with equipment that exists in the market. This type of equipment is for remediation. If there is hydrate formation, I can access it and break it down. In addition, if I find something new, a new deposit, I can connect it to this equipment. So it has a double function. We always work with prevention and then with remediation. Another output of the studies is chemical pumping.
That's a prevention for hydrate formation. We have several small lines inside the umbilical. What's interesting is that we have chemicals for hydrate prevention and chemicals to ensure the health of the whole subsea pipes: anti-corrosion, the emulsifying, so flow assurance relies on this type of equipment, so this is another output of the studies at Wahoo, and it's all very technically robust. In addition to two production lines, we have a number of ways of preventing hydrate from forming, and lastly, I would like to speak about the performance of Hunter Queen rig. It is the first drilling campaign of this rig.
The rig comes from a strategy of verticalization of core assets, and this performance reinforces our strategy. The rig, because it operates at a much lower market price, we can drill wells at a much lower cost, and we've been having excellent performance. The rig is operating greater than 97% of the time, so it is 97% available, 97% of the time for drilling, so this is a confirmation of our strategy, and I believe that in the coming year, this will improve even more, and the result of the first pre-salt well, P-01, well, we knew that the pre-salt is not trivial. We were able to drill it and complete it in 79 days. An excellent number comparing to the market. P-02, 98 days.
For this well, we had the acquisition of seismics, so we had some additional activities at the well to collect information and to ensure that we have data to simulate production. Now we are drilling P-03. It is believed to be finished before 75 days. It's a learning curve. When you're drilling, it is normal to adapt the project based on the information you get from the first wells. Lastly, P-04, that we should finalize by April 26 and start producing. If all goes well in the subsea, we'll start producing with three wells at the field. If we can bring drilling forward, we'll have four, but that's kind of not sure. We have about $40 million per cost, which is a good result.
I'll invite now Picarelli to speak about Wahoo results and about the development campaign. Oh, actually, that will be after the coffee break. You're going to have a 10-minute coffee break. 20 minutes coffee break, and then we'll have more on Wahoo. Then you'll be able to take a part of Wahoo's project home. Roberto prepared something for you. Thank you. Well, this is the job for me.
[Foreign language]
I've been working at PRIO. Since 2013, a lot of the story of the field is kept in my HD, my hard disk. We used to just with four wells and a structure this big. So what we did was we got the other platform and tied it to a vessel where we had the whole structure ready. So your cost per barrel is reduced, and then the project can be much longer living because it becomes economically viable. You're talking about around 15 years. We initially had about four years for the lifespan and a lot more now. I think I can retire now.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon. My name is André Picarelli. I am the Subsea Manager of PRIO, and I'll speak about five of our assets. Five assets where we have the most activities this year and the assets that will require more activities in 2026 and beyond. We'll speak about Wahoo, Frade, Albacora Leste, ABL, Peregrino, and Polvo. We had some activity at Polvo this year and with very interesting results. So let's start with Wahoo, which is our big project this year. And I'll speak about some results we've had so far. No mapa que está colocado aqui, vocês têm in the map. On the map, we can see in green the four wells that we will be drilling at the field.
In blue, we have the position of the two injectors. This is a structural map at the top of the reservoir, the Macabu 100 formation. In the seismic cross cut, this shows what's happening, what's flowing through the four wells to be developed, going all the way to ABL2, which is outlining the north part of the field. W e have Producer One, Producer Two, and the two trajectories of Producer of Producing Well Three. T he results of the two wells that we have already drilled, Producing Well One and Two, they were within the expected range. Prod One with a slightly low net pay, 46 m, and Producing Well Two, a little more, 67, 68 m of net pay.
P roducer One, while we ran an activity test, and one of the big uncertainties at a field is the fractures, the flaws.
We have a number of faults at the field, and we suspected that one of the uncertainties was that these faults could be barriers. If they were barriers, we would have to drill more wells to outflank the volume. Producer One showed a great injectivity. Very, very good indeed. It isn't a stimulated well and mainly without barriers. The test that we ran reached down to 800 m, and we had a relatively important fault at 500-600 m away from the well. That fault, although it is present, it's not a barrier. This was an important result for us for the future of the field. In Producer or Producing Well Two, we completed it with what we call Fishbone technology.
I'll speak more about it. Fishbone stimulates the reservoir in a directional way. I will explain this later. In the cross-section, we see two trajectories of Prod Three, the green and the red one, and this is work that is being very well conducted by the team. Practically real-time, we're updating the models. As we get the data, we update the model. We end a well, and we have the well ready to review the trajectory of the next well, and this is what we did for Producer Two by adjusting the speed of the field. We adjusted the structure, and we repositioned Producer Three in a more favorable position, really close to its original plan, and this is what we do.
We have a model. We have a team working full-time in this model, and we can update the 3D model of the field, avoiding these tectonic faults. ABL3 is located in this part of the structure. It is what we consider a low-risk well, close to 70, that showed oil all the way to the base. A nother important information is that another uncertainty was the oil-water contact. Because we considered that we had good control, minus 400, more 480, 30 m. W e confirmed that the oil-water contact. In a nutshell, the results are confirming our expectations for the field. We are not reviewing the model. I mean, we're always reviewing the model.
T he volumes are in line with expected, considering the margin of error that always exists. W e had the injectivity test that proved good mobility and absence of barriers in the region investigated by the test, proving that the faults, although present, allow outflow and drainage. Fi shbone stimulation, that's the first time we do it in Brazil. Jean's team was able to execute it flawlessly. It issues a number of needles that cross the reservoir, the carbonate reservoir, and become more acidic, thus improving the productivity of the field. It had never been applied in Brazil.
The SPE paper shows a productivity increase of 2.5 x, in some cases even more, so what does it do, actually? This is a carbonate reservoir in the pre-salt. We know that there are natural fractures, open and closed fractures, and what the Fishbone does is a connection with the natural fractures of the reservoir, and it also handles the bypass of the damaged zone. In other words, when we drill the well, this tends to reduce the permeability of the zone invaded by the fluid. It invades up to 12 m within the reservoir, bypassing the zone with the damage, and it stimulates the reservoir deeply.
T he other big advantage, the option would be to do hydraulic fracturing. H ydraulic fracturing, although it is efficient, it does not give us any control where it goes. It can get, for example, a water zone and bring water to the well and hinder productivity, although it will increase productivity of the total fluid. So we will be applying the Fishbone technology in other wells. It is the first time that we do it in Brazil. W e did it very successfully.
[Foreign language]
That's Frade.
[Foreign language]
Frade is a field with an original oil in place. And all of them have an original oil in place that are significant. Frade, more than one billion. Albacora, almost four. P eregrino, more than four, 4.6 billion. Original oil in place.
Every 1% recovery factor extra that we get for the field is a significant volume. For Peregrino, 440 million new barrels. The recovery factor is very low, 15% at Frade. In other fields, even lower. Here, this is a big opportunity at Frade. We have four sets of reservoirs at Frade. What do they have in common? There is a lot of heterogeneity, and there are barriers between them. Every little thing here is what we call geobodies. They are disconnected from the others. This generates a huge infill drilling opportunity. This is the plan that we have for almost all of these reservoirs. It all includes infill drilling, but it needs to be economical.
That is reusability, the work that we do with Jean's team to drill wells that are very cheap. You will see our strategy to pursue will be to drill more, drill more infill wells economically to extend the recovery factor to be way above what we expected. This is one of the highest we have. You will see Peregrino has 12.5% final recovery factor. This is unacceptable, so we have to improve it. This is basically what we have for Frade. A lot of heterogeneous reservoirs, compartmentalization, and with a low recovery factor. We are going to go after the recovery factor. What have we done at the field? In 2023-24, as you know, we had the revitalization project that increased production.
It boomed at six producers, two injectors, and some exploratory wells. In 2024, two pilots. In 2024-25, we had static data, dynamic production data of the fields. W e are digesting all of the data, and we are updating static and dynamic models of the field and doing it very intensely so that we can ensure the next leap of production, which will be FRP3. In addition to the static models that we have made this year, and this is another common point for all of our assets, we are bringing a lot of attention to the management of the reservoirs with water. In the case of ABL or Frade, water injection was very low, below what the field needs, especially at ABL.
W e resumed injection in zone 560, two zones, 560 and 54X. And we were quite successful. And we are now planning the next phase. The biggest novelty here, you will see Peregrino, ABL. In addition to the operating efficiency, we're working strongly on technology. You will see that 4D seismics that we are doing for Frade, Peregrino, and we've done it in ABL, and the seismic is being interpreted. All of this will add significant value to the fields, driven by technology. We already have seismic acquisition. The bid has been completed. We'll acquire the seismics by the end of 2026.
I n the end of 2027, we'll have the new interpretation of the seismics to guide us, everything related to future development. Y ou will see the development that they are proposing this year. There's a slide about this. It privileges areas with infrastructure at the field, areas where we already have infrastructure. They are lower risk areas. W e are leaving exploration in the Ring Fence more to the future because the 4D seismics will add value for these prospects. So basically, the roadmap we have for Frade is this one. This is what we are going to do in 2026. We're going to be drilling two wells. They will access many reservoirs.
One is this one that we are calling it Infill One. Well Two, we are calling Infill Two. Infill One, we'll get into this development of 570 at the high block. We'll prove the Jureia prospect, and we'll get to the reservoir zone of the 550, 447. The other infill well is also directional. It will access this geobody of the 570, the west part of the field, and the low part of the 570, testing a number of reservoirs. We'll test this other geobody of 570 in the low block. We believe that these infills can generate four producing wells. We're being very conservative in our business plan. We have one spot well for 2029 or 2030.
I think that this year we'll have good news. All of these more risky prospects, we'll leave them for when we have the 4D seismic. These trajectories are still preliminary. We have Jean's team trying to optimize this, right, Jean? Perhaps with just one until we can have the five trajectories to gain time and do it at a lower cost. In a nutshell, the 4D seismic bid is concluded. This yellow part here is the OBN seismic. These are nodes that we put in the bottom of the sea. This is the most modern 4D seismic in Brazil. It was registered in the 2000s. Now we are getting another snapshot of this seismic, getting basically this area in green to compare.
Then we'll see, you will see the results of ABL, Albacora, and we can compare the impedances. We can see the movement of fluid in the field. You will see that the ABL results are extremely interesting. The seismic will cover a good part of the prospects that we have in this zone of the field, ILX. Like I said, we are going to be in 2026, cost reduction and risk management, these infill wells in the reservoir zone. We will continue the maturity with 4D new input for the exploratory prospects.
I think the future of Frade, like I said before, will include a lot of infill drilling. We're working with this with our development team to drill wells costing much less, $20 million, so that these will be much more attractive and increase the recovery factor because as it is, it is unacceptable to us. Okay, Albacora Leste, ABL.
I'll move to this side because I think it's easier for me. Albacora has three main reservoirs in the post-salt zone, 110, 120, this red one, the 140, which is the main zone of the field, and 210, actually. Then we have Arapuá, which I didn't include in the seismic. This is a map of the distribution of the reservoirs of the zones and recovered fraction, very low at ABL, a recovery factor 1P of 20%, which in our opinion is very low. This is a common thing we see in the Campos Basin, very low recovery factors. If we compare with the North Sea or even the Gulf of Mexico, it's low. Albeit speaking of heavy oil, still a recovery factor is low.
This is a big challenge, not just for PRIO, but for the whole country. We're leaving a lot of oil down there. Permeability is spectacular above 1 Darcy. In Frade, all of our permeabilities are really, really good. In terms of development strategy, in 2025, this was a year of production and injection management. The old operator, in terms of the topside left, left the injection system of the field at a very poor state with a lot of injectivity deficit in terms of replenishing volume. W hat we did this year, in addition to the 4D seismic result and the updating of the reservoir model, the team did a spectacular work in terms of modeling.
We dedicated a lot of time to the recovery of the injectors and increasing injectivity. Petrobras had a certain envelope of injection. We challenged this injection envelope in a very safe way. We had a number of tests, and we were able to improve injectivity safely by 30%-40%. In some wells, we actually doubled injectivity, and another spectacular feat of the operational team, Jean's team, Lourenço's team, was water treatment. Unfortunately, we had a water quality that was very poor at Albacora, and the team did excellent work. The main problem was the content of sediments in water that reduced from like 130.
I don't know, it reduced 5x , so our water now is considered of very good quality. Something else that Jean's team did was to put an acidification unit at the platform. We used to do it using vessels. It cost a lot. Whenever we lost injectivity, we would acidify it, so now we have comfort at the field. We don't have to close down the wells, and we can replenish volumes, which we couldn't do before. In 2026, what do we expect to do? We are finishing three static and dynamic models. The dynamic model is already running, and we will be doing adjustments at the after drilling programs.
You will see the 4D seismic image that we will show you that the 2027 campaign is very mature. It's just a matter of fine-tuning, optimizing the trajectories, the extension of the horizontals. It's fine-tuning. For 2027, it's the start of the drilling and revitalization program of the field. I am sure that this field will bring us a lot of joy. We will have the startup of production at Arapuá through the connection of one well. If we do it well, there are two more wells to be drilled. As in all fields, we are focusing a lot on water injection management, increasing and maintaining injectivity, replenishing volumes that we're getting out of the reservoir, and reversing the trend left by the PRIOr operator.
This is just one sample because this is really interesting. This is the 4D Seismic result. This is the impedance difference between the current, the past seismic and the current seismic. R ed is what we call softening. It's gas replacing oil or oil replacing water. In blue is what we call hardening. It is water replacing hydrocarbons mainly. So what do we see? These are the gas layers of the field. W e can see that some areas of the field have high concentration of gas, others with greater water. This is the zone 140, and this is the zone 210. W e can see very clearly, together with numerical simulation, we can see it very clearly, and we can be very predictive in terms of where are the best water oil saturation zones.
For next year, we'll have these two wells in the high oil saturation zones and the injectors. Its function is to prevent gas from expanding and replacing ABL13, which is a well in a good zone. T hen we have these two zones. T here are some zones that we are identifying with a high possibility of adding more wells, more infill. Again, this will require infill technology, infill wells, cheaper wells to improve the recovery factor. In zone 210, we have located these three producers to bring the oil to this zone. I n a nutshell, we have validated the seven wells, five producers to injectors for 2027. The 2027 campaign is all assured.
Now it's just a matter of fine-tuning, working on costs, working to optimize the trajectories. Let's speak a little about Peregrino. Gabriel spoke a lot about Peregrino.
But unlike other transitions with other or from other operators, Peregrino was a positive surprise. Because as Gabriel said, the relationship with Equinor during the transition in terms of them giving us information was just amazing. It's spectacular. They gave us the static, dynamic models. We had like six workshops. So there was a knowledge transfer that I had never seen before. I participated in many transitions in my professional life, but this was unprecedented. The result is that with less than six months at the field, I can say that our subsea team has everything in our hands. We have the field in our hands.
As Gabriel mentioned, initially, as we have a good knowledge of the Equinor model, we will continue as is. We won't risk it. At the same time, we will build our models. What is unique about Peregrino? Peregrino is a very compartmentalized field. We have these canyons that cut through the reservoir, separating it into different compartments with different water oil contexts. And the second compartmentalization, which is the sedimentary system, proximal turbidites, deep waters, all channeled. Some people see this as a bad thing. We see it as an opportunity, though, because there are many of these bodies that are bypassed.
They're not drained. I have a well here, and perhaps there's this channel that was not drained. We have to drill and bring that oil up. And this is what we are envisioning for Peregrino. Recovery factor is ridiculously low, 7.4% for 4.6 billion of original oil in place, additional 40 million barrels of additional reserves. And the strategy will be to use an efficient secondary approach and then infill. Equinor did a tertiary recovery project, which technically was successful, increased oil recovery and reduced water. We're seeing how we can scale up this project. It is perhaps another important front that might have an impact on Polvo, TBMT, and even ABL.
Gabriel mentioned this. This is the famous Isolado. It is an area at the center of the field where we see a great potential. Equinor also saw a potential there, but they didn't have time to develop it. This area is at the very center. Equinor drilled this well, 15A. This well found oil to the base of the layer. In other words, it did not find the water oil contact. The structural line of this is located here. This area has 350 million of oil in place, proven. It's not in the reserve. We are going to be drilling this one, 17A. This was proposed by Equinor, and we validated the well to prove this lower part because this is an amplitude area very similar to this.
I t is oil that is well known. So we will drill this well, and we will drill a producer based on 15A, an area that is already outlined. Once 17A proves on our theory, we will make a plan for the whole Isolado area. It is an area that can be very, very interesting. We can never say Polvo is depleted. There's always more. My team of geologists, when they say there's nothing else left, it's the time to change the geologist. Because Polvo is an example of that. We drilled this well, POL-G, located in the development area of the field. I t gave us a very good net pay and with pressure 20% above expected. A well with 98% net pay.
A useful reservoir to be completed. Now we are in the process of completing it with the help of Jean's team. We have Well B in this zone of the field. We are going to be testing the pinch-out. It's turbidite, and we have a zone of pinch-out more towards the end of the reservoir. If it is positive, it can open up this whole zone down here. If it is possible, we will try to test this zone here. This would be most likely 2027 or 2026, maybe. All of these other smaller things, we are studying them, reviewing them, reviewing the economics to see what we can do. This is the trajectory of the well that we drilled, and we have a good expectation of production for this well.
Okay, this is what I had I'll turn the floor to Lourenço, who will talk about the operation. Thank you.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Picarelli. Boa tarde. Good afternoon.
[Foreign language]
My name is Lourenço. I lead the maintenance of projects and assets at PRIO. I t's a pleasure for me to be with you today. My mission at PRIO is to increase operating efficiency and the lifespan of the assets through maintenance, integrity, and projects. When we speak about maintenance, we also talk about topside challenges. We started with the acquisition of a field through operating transition, and Gabriel said that he was in charge of Peregrino's transition. T his is a very critical moment because we are transferring an operation from one company to another that they had different cultures, different maintenance and modus operandi. So this is a critical area.
T hen we mapped out all of the detractors and availability of equipment. S ome challenges are already well stated. T he other challenges, you find out about them as soon as you start operating the field. I t's important that you map out the detractors really quickly. The structural integrity means you have steel units in the sea environment, so you have to fight corrosion as soon as it appears. T hen next comes the perpetuity of the assets. W e have to look at the reliability and monitoring of the machines because the machines talk to you. Y ou have to listen to them.
You have to work in terms of building up data that allows you to react before things start happening. This is crucial to our business. Then you have to extend the lifespan of the assets.
In the case of Frade and Polvo, Polvo was to be abandoned in 2016, and today it has the same production in 2026. Frade, now we are already working for its extension for 2049. This involves structural reinforcement. Structurally, we prepare the plant for the oil that's about to come. Not only do we maintain the assets, but we also have to make a series of modifications to receive the upsides of wells that will be drilled next to the fields. We have to look at the tiebacks as well. Now I'll talk a little bit about the detractors. As part of operating efficiency, we identify that we have two major detractors at PRIO today when it comes to maintenance.
We did some strategic and very focused work because this will certainly bear good results.
We have a compression system, which accounted for the bulk of the loss, and then we have the generation system. To fight the challenges, we need machine availability, having the machines available and also reliable because that's critical if we want to promote operating efficiency, establishing redundancies. The critical equipment for the business and security have to be reliable and have the necessary redundancies. It may sound obvious, but Albacora Leste last year, our most recent case, we only received it with 50% of the available generation capacity.
Now we are already with 75%, and for next year, we will have 100% generation capacity in that plant. We have to review the maintenance strategies. When we draw up our maintenance strategy, we look at the manufacturer's manual, we look at all the lessons learned from the industry, and we also add some of our own knowledge to our maintenance strategy. This is our core business: acquisition of reserve equipment. If everything faILTs and the equipment also faILTs, we have to have spare equipment to fight the detractors very quickly. This is our instrument to fight problems and increase efficiency.
Certainly, it's important that we keep a constant monitoring of all of our assets. We had a lot of data at PRIO. We connected everything through data link, and we are operating with correlation algorithms to correct failures. It's important that we are able to predict failure even before they occur. Speaking about production units and subsea units, we have to also talk about corrosion and integrity. In that note, I mean, we have to be more efficient than the corrosion that appears. We have to fight corrosion faster than when it's generated. There are two ways to do that. One is through preventive measures, anti-corrosion measures, meaning painting.
We have to paint the surfaces. When corrosion is more advanced, we have to replace things to resume the original condition of the unit. We are talking about expanding the lifespan of the asset by 20 years. We have to take care of that. Speaking about lifespan, this is one of the largest concentrations we have at PRIO. When we talk about Frade, a unit projected to operate for 20 years, and today we are working with an additional 20 years of extension, it's almost like giving that production unit a second life. For that, we use a computational model. We generate finite elements, and then we identify areas that will allow the asset to achieve the expected lifespan.
What about reliability? We work to continuously improve our maintenance plan. We execute the plan, we learn from it, then we go back to the engineering table to review it, and then we execute it again. We have a mandala that shows continuous improvement of maintenance plan and integrity. Not only that, we are now collecting data to monitor correlation of equipment. We already have more than 1,000 models and more than 50 critical assets monitored. Once the asset is maintained, now it's time to get the house in order to receive new oil. In 2026, we have two large projects to adjust the topside.
The first project is Wahoo's oil that we have to deliver in the beginning of next year, and the Arapuá project that involves adjusting Albacora Leste's FPSO to receive Arapuá's oil. That's a pre-salt field. Finally, one major lesson learned was Albacora Leste. When we look at the operating efficiency back then with turbines and compressors and all the losses, basically, Albacora Leste is responsible for the majority of the losses.
That's why this year we put together another program called Zeus, where we are revitalizing all of Albacora Leste's critical systems, establishing redundancies and integrity. In the first quarter of next year, our focus would be to resume the fourth turbine and recover the cooling system of the unit. This turbine has not been operational since 2019. It hasn't been in operation for almost seven years. We received it non-operational, and now we are working to putting it back in operation. It went on fire last year. With that, we will be able to restore redundancy and have 100% of generation. The cooling system, the cooling medium of the unit, is also being repaired.
It's a huge line that crosses the entire unit. This involves major work, and this work should be concluded by March, and then the introduction of the third compressor in the second quarter of next year, and this will increase even more the availability, ensuring more stable production. We already had some increments from the recent measures, but next year, we will be over 90% of efficiency. So now I'll call Gustavo that will talk about trading.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon, everyone. Well, I'm Gustavo Hooper. I'm in charge of trading and everything that has to do with the trading of the products that PRIO produces. So basically, we're talking about oil, how do we reach the markets, shipping, and natural gas. So I'll start with a short video to show that we have a lot of things going.
This is just to get you in tune with the world of trading. First oil. The shuttle tanker. At FPSO North.
[Foreign language]
Bow Loading system.
[Foreign langu age]
This is a vessel that we use to transfer to a VLCC vessel.
[Foreign language]
W e see the difference in size between the two vessels.
[Foreign language]
The transfer is done while the vessels are in motion with low hydrostatic pressure that keeps both vessels in position. Here you see the VLCC being loaded. The Suezmax is being loaded at the same time.
[Foreign language]
T he VLCC moves on to the market. And the other with dynamic positioning remains in Brazilian waters, goes to Uruguay to do other shuttles. This is to illustrate a bit of what we do. Of course, the name seems a little bit romantic, but in fact, everything is very physical because there is a lot of things that are happening. And when we talk about Peregrino, we have some special challenges. Peregrino, as Gabriel mentioned, produces heavy oil. Not only is it heavy, but it's very thick. And down below, we have a table to allow you to see the thickness of the Peregrino oil.
Peregrino is like honey, and ABL, it's very similar to sour cream or yogurt, so it's easy for you to see the viscosity of the oils, and Búzios, who is an export flagship, it's a medium oil, and viscosity is very similar to olive oil, then you can see the difference between the different oils, so Peregrino's logistics is very complex because it requires special vessels. You have to warm up, to heat up the vessel. The unloading has to be done very carefully to ensure that we can do something efficiently. But if there are challenges, there are also opportunities. The main opportunity that we capture from day one are the co-loads with our own portfolio, so we can load larger vessels in Peregrino when you have future opportunities to load VLCC straight from the platform.
In 2025, we had good results with other oils that we blended in the vessel, in the ship, to correct viscosity. This is a project that we are also pursuing in Peregrino. All of that, and all of the efforts are already bearing results. In this chart, we can already see the differences of FOB equivalent to ICE Brent. If you look at the first line in blue, it shows a differential from another heavy oil. It's a Colombian oil in this case, [Foreign language] Peregrino. Peregrino while it was being produced by those who owned 40% of the asset, these were the numbers that they achieved. So you see that there is a big difference between the two physical oils.
Once we were in charge of the trading, we applied all of our logistic expertise and the capacity to create synergies between the different assets. We see a major differential. We already expected to have this upside, but not at this level because not only this brings about logistic savings, when you increase your trading batch, you can also reach other markets in a very economical way, and then you have a more competitive oil. The trend from heavy oils shows that it was a very positive year. It's been a very positive year in terms of differentials. The physical market is healthy.
It was healthy until the moment of the chart, and we see a big difference between what was before, what was done last year, and this year in terms of physical oils. Certainly, the differential to ICE Brent is something that we cannot control, but when you compare two physical oils, you can clearly see the synergy that exists between assets and all of our investments in developing the trading area, and particularly when it comes to Peregrino. Here, this is the main source where our synergy comes from. VLCC, the oil from VLCC, the trading of this oil increased a lot in 2023.
When we decided to restructure and mature our trading strategy, we increased the proportion of VLCC considerably in our sales, not only to China or to more distant markets, but also to markets that were negotiated in Suezmax. In 2026, we had our first trips in VLCC. The proportion was still small, but in 2024, we increased the number of trips when compared to Suezmax trips. Now in 2025, you see that the ratio is considerably higher.
[Foreign language]
There you can see the bird's eye view of both vessels, and this represents an enormous efficiency gain. This involves the trading team, the operations team, and PRIO's execution capacity. Today, PRIO is the only company in Brazil that does this operation, but this is a recurring operation in West Africa and also in the Guianas. We brought this operation mode to Brazil. The forces present at VLCC are different. Suezmax, it's a different aspect. With that, we were able to reach 100% of the markets in the world. Today, we can take our oil to 100% of the markets, starting with the West Coast of the U.S., going to Europe, Middle East.
We can sell oil to India, Asia, Singapore, China, Korea, Northern China. These are the markets where we operate. You see the arbitrage we have in all markets, in every cycle. Today, India, that for a very long time used to pay very little for our oil because of geopolitical changes, now India is decreasing its purchases from Russian oil. Now we are selling a lot more to India, taking advantage of this window of opportunity. Freight arbitrage, what is there for us to gain when we do VLCC with Frade? In blue, we see prices of freight per barrel around $7, Suezmax from Brazil to China, and how much would be the price using the VLCC.
In the bars down below, we see how many dollars per barrel is the difference between VLCC and Suezmax. The proportion of the bar, I mean, it ranges between something around $5, but the average is around $2. This light blue area shows how much it would cost us to do that ship-to-ship transaction at Frade as well. This operation, or every time arbitrage was at this level here, it would pay off for me to do a transfer operation to put together 2 million barrels within the VLCC. Then when we started operating VLCC at Frade directly, my cost to put that within VLCC, the cost became very minimum for dollar per barrel.
The waiting time for you to get the other portion and the deviation until another port or another FPSO until you get the other portion. Here you see the difference in scale. This is VLCC that it carries 2 million barrels. Suezmax was a vessel that was a charter vessel for us. It carries two million barrels. Therefore, we had a considerable increase in productivity. Now I'll talk a little bit about natural gas. As of January of 2025, we structure the natural gas area very similar to what we did with oil. We decided to control logistics, control our molecules ourselves, and we did that by accessing the infrastructure that is now operated by Petrobras.
Petrobras is forced to give us access to their infrastructure, so we access the distribution system to the Campos Basin. Our gas is treated through an integrated processing plant, and we now use the transportation infrastructure from another company. Before that, all of our gas was sold at the well at a very small amount. B y having access to the infrastructure, our netback, or gas equivalent, or how much that occupies at the mouth of the well, we get a much higher selling price. Not only that, we have operating security since logistics is under my control. I can control everything, and this is much better in terms of operating security.
Since I can balance production between my different assets, I have good savings because at times when I have surplus of gas in one asset and scarcity in another asset, I can balance things out. We had $20 million in savings by only balancing things between the assets. A s I said, we can sell the gas at a much higher price. And this is certainly another benefit stemming from this strategy. The strategy was envisioned for Wahoo because Wahoo will bring about a lot more gas when compared to what we had until then. W e access the infrastructure already thinking about trading Wahoo's gas, but we developed this market at a very timely fashion after the acquisition of Peregrino.
We will import gas at Peregrino, and we can do that balancing among the assets that have surplus of gas, which is Wahoo and Peregrino, fields that will import gas on a recurrent basis. T his is another source of savings and efficiency. T hat's it. Thank you all.
[Foreign langauge]
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Thiago Almeida. I am the manager for sustainability at PRIO. The PRIO Sustainability Department is oftentimes called ESG. We are in charge of environmental management and security, security processes, and occupational safety and health.
My message to you today is environment and safety, starting with the environment. Obviously, we will talk a little bit about the future. What are our expectations vis-à-vis environmental licenses? We start with the ratification to drill new wells in Frade, and I think at the end of 2025 and early 2027, we will get the licenses. Looking at Wahoo, the licenses are in place for drilling and installation, and now we head towards the final phase once we get the first oil at Wahoo. Polvo and ABL, we are focusing on wells and their ratification for the drilling of new wells. ABL is workover. Both Polvo and ABL are foreseen or forecasted for the middle of 2026.
Looking at the company as a whole, we should submit our request to IBAMA for the geographic area. In addition to Petrobras, we will be the first company to submit this request for geographic area. This will bring about savings in terms of cost management and savings in terms of time for drilling and workover of new wells and operating efficiency. Having said that, speaking about the environment, we look at environmental projects, looking towards the future and actions for 2026. Here we have the forecast for a large environmental project with relevant environmental impact.
We are now finalizing and doing the fine-tuning of this large environmental project for 2026 and focusing on emissions. Now we are designing a pilot project for 2026 related to methane emissions for offshore projects. This is in line with the new ANP regulation. They already published a draft, and they already talked about the regulation related to methane emissions for all offshore facilities. A s a company, we are already getting ahead of ourselves, redesigning a pilot project together with ANP, together with the agency. This is an offshore pilot project related to methane emissions.
Now I'll talk a little bit about safety. Given everything that was said before, a lot of people in the company have to take care of the facilities as a whole. So our commitment to safety permeates the entire company, and we have the sustainability area that takes care of that. We have a team that is reinforcing our structure and all of the techniques. In terms of operating safety, we have a safety management system. Even though this topic sounds as something very philosophical, it's not philosophical, but it's very concrete. And now I will tell you a little bit about the 17 practices that support our safety management system.
But basically, PRIO's safety system is geared to risks. All of our management practices we'll see here are directed to avoid a major accident because this is what really drains value from any company. Other chemical, petrochemical, mining, steel company, oil and gas, aviation, whatever. C ompanies need to spare no efforts to prevent major accidents. Our management system is risk-oriented, performance-based, and it is aligned not only to serve to meet the regulatory framework, but it needs to be aligned with the best practices of the industry. When we speak about safety, mainly process safety, we're talking about a global industry.
Process safety in Brazil is the same one as it is in Japan, Indonesia, U.S., UK So our safety management is designed to be regulatory compliant. In our case of offshore regulations by ANP, the Navy, the Ministry of Labor, but mainly corporate risk management, which at the end of the day means managing business risks and risks of our assets, and like I said, it's all based on 17 management practices. When we look at Page 17, it starts with culture of safety, training, performance indicators, internal, external auditing, critical elements of operating security, identification, analysis of risks, mechanical integrity, change management.
All this operational safety management is not just philosophical. It all cascades down into thousands of SOPs, analysis of risks of our plants, and so on and so forth, so there is a formal materialization behind it, and it reflects on the performance of our assets. Now, looking at the 17 practices, I would like to focus on practice six, linked to continuous monitoring and improvement of performance. That's where we contain safety indicators because safety must be measured, and we do measure safety at PRIO.
When we look at performance indicators, the performance indicators play an important role in the management system, mainly because it is the way that the top management of any company can monitor, track, and verify the safety performance of an industrial asset, whatever the type of the plant or process, so it is high value for the top management, and for us to be able to monitor evolution or involution, and then come up with action plans when an indicator is far from its target, so what kind of actions will the company take to bring that indicator back to target.
T he first indicator I'd like to mention to you is called Tier 1, and here's a disclaimer. This is an indicator related to major spillouts or releases. This is an important indicator. I would risk saying it is the most important one in process safety. I think the chemical, petrochemical, oil, and gas industries, it is an indicator of big releases. We will mention losses of containment, not just any spill, the main spills, the major ones. Why is this indicator important for safety? Because when we have losses of containment, that's when we have a higher likelihood of fire and explosion.
Fire and explosion are the events with the highest damage potential and the potential to hurt human beings and the environment and the asset, of course. Major explosion will put human lives at risk, but also have the potential to destroy the asset. So this major release indicator, these are the Tier 1 events. There are criteria to explain what is a major release. When we look at PRIO's performance as a company in recent years, we can see the light blue line as the international benchmark by IOGP. IOGP is made up of 55 oil-producing companies, among the biggest in the world: Chevron, Exxon, Petrobras, and others. PRIO is part of IOGP together with Petrobras.
We are the only operators that are part of the IOGP benchmark. This is the IOGP benchmark and PRIO's performance [Foreign language] management of large releases. Tier 1 events measured by the Tier 1 indicator have to do with large releases that can happen within walls or outside of walls. Fortunately, in the case of PRIO, we've never had any release to the sea. All of the releases we had were spills to the inside of the facility, never to the environment. We can see that in 2025, the IOGP has not been published yet, so we replicated the 2024 one. We said very much in line with the previous years.
This year, we had a total of zero large releases. We didn't have any containment loss that would be considered major in any of the platforms or assets of the company. When we look at this trend in the timeline, it's all about everything we said regarding the management system, which is based on best practices, focusing on risk management. We see that our safety management system has matured as a whole. To give you more context regarding spills, this is Brazil. We haven't got PRIO's data here. The dark blue bars are offshore operators in Brazil.
This is data coming from the annual safety report published by ANP, published this year with the performance results of the industry in 2024. So, the blue, we see major leaks of flammable gas in offshore installations. I repeat, this is not PRIO. And in light blue, the benchmark used International Regulators Forum, globally. So we see that this was a massive explosion that brought this number up. And we can see that particularly post-pandemic, we have seen a worsening of the offshore industry as a whole in terms of large releases of gas from 2020 to 2024. And ANP does not have a tier one indicator specifically, and that's why it got larger flammable gas releases.
We see the opposite trend here at PRIO, a reduction of large releases, large spills, again showing that our safety management system is becoming more and more robust as time goes by. Another important indicator more linked to occupational safety is what we call TRIR or T-RIR, which is relative to the rate of incidents recorded. Basically, incidents that require people staying away from work, basically employees that cannot come to work. We can see a comparison of the company's assets, PRIO with IOGP. Again, we can see a positive trend of this indicator in terms of safety related to TRIR, to this benchmark.
In 2025, we reached a number lower than the benchmark. Again, I need to be repetitive because this is important. This points to maturity of our safety management system as time goes by. Not just maturity, but the company's focus on preventing and avoiding major spills and also pointing to improved occupational safety. Lastly, and coming to an end, safety to us is a value. It's not something written in the company's policy that is neglected. It's just posted on the wall. No, safety to us is a value because it has a direct impact on our result. Lastly, I'm going to show a video that I believe you all know. It's easy.
I Love PRIO platform, focused on the social, cultural, sports platform, but w e, as an oil company, we believe we have to leave a legacy for society because we produce and we operate oil in Brazil. W e created the PRIO Institute, the first oil company to actually create an institute geared and focused on the social and environmental aspects. W e will show a video speaking a little about the I Love PRIO platform and the PRIO Institute. Thank you very much. PRIO was born in the oil and gas industry, but early on, we chose to be a lot more than that. Our true legacy lies in the impact we leave for people, communities, and the environment.
That is why we created a sponsorship platform called I Love PRIO to broaden this impact and strengthen what moves Brazil. More than investing, we participate. More than supporting, we transform stories. We believe in projects that aim high and break down walls in sports, culture, or social transformation. This is the legacy that remains and is multiplied. One life transformed inspires many of us. Guided by this vision, we broadened our purpose to go beyond the social, embracing also an environmental commitment through PRIO Institute, because there's no future without care.
The institute was born to have a positive environmental impact at scale with three strategic pillars: environmental education, biodiversity, climate, and sea economics. Sustainability to us is not just lip service. It's our daily practice. When the social culture and the social environmental need, something unique is born, integrated impact that looks at people, the planet, and to everything that we can build together. This is our purpose: to leave a positive and long-lasting legacy. PRIO, much more than oil and gas.
[Foreign language]
Very well, and I would like to invite on stage Nelson, Roberto, Francilmar, and Milton for the Q&A session.
[Foreign language]
If you want to ask a question, just raise your hand and we'll give you the microphone.
[Foreign language]
December 2025, January 2026. That is the concept for Frade. It seems that there was a typo in the presentation. We had promised it for December.
[Foreign language]
Does anybody have a question? I'm Gabriel Barra with Citi. Thank you for the presentation.
[Foreign language]
For a while, we didn't have a PRIO day, so it's really cool to see the projects, et cetera. Perhaps what called my attention the most was this dividend payout discussion.
I'll get back to my question in the last PRIO day. A question that I made about a formal dividend policy and why you didn't do it back then. I heard Nelson and also you, Roberto, so what has changed from then to now in terms of having a formal dividend payout policy? Also, the discussion on M&A, not to do M&A deals as a form of correct capital allocation. What do you see looking forward and putting it together with the dividend policy in the future of PRIO? My second question is about production, and this is my question. My question is, what are you going to do after Wahoo? I think that you answered the question.
Let's speak about the revitalization of Frade with this third phase of Frade, what we can expect in terms of production, reserves. I don't know if it's too early to talk about that, but if you could elaborate, it would be very helpful.
[Foreign language]
I'll start, and Nelson can complement if he thinks it makes sense. In terms of what changed regarding the dividend policy in the last PRIO Day two years ago, it's the maturity of the company. The moment we're having. Back then, we clearly saw that our cash generation was going to be entirely consumed in the coming years in M&A deals. We could talk about it, but at the time, we were already considering Peregrino, and we knew that Peregrino was not going to be just one single deal, that it was going to be more than one deal. We had the Sinochem and then Equinor involved. T his was very clear in our minds.
But today, we're getting to the maturity level of the company that, you know, if you think about oil costing $60 a barrel, producing 200,000 barrels a day, which is what we have already contracted, we're going to generate an amount of cash, if we consider $60 per barrel, of about $2 billion a year. It's kind of hard to allocate $2 billion a year. It's not trivial. So we had this discussion at the board, and we thought, okay, the policy needs to be flexible enough because if we have an opportunity of M&A, we might not have dividends. It's not written in stone. It shouldn't be done in detriment of the company.
If we find projects that make sense in terms of return, we have to have flexibility of not having dividends paid. Another relevant point is indebtedness.
It's not like I'm going to keep a dividend policy that is going to corrode the company over time. No. So we have to keep an eye on the debt level to keep the debt low. But we see now that the company is at a different level of maturity. And I guess that that is why that discussion came to surface. And this is a discussion that we're having at the board. It's not just dividends. It is share buyback, dividends to be paid, and so on and so forth. So this is a new phase, a new maturity of the company. A s for capital allocation, you said it yourself. If you look back, we acquired Peregrino X, Y, Z. And our shares are at the current level.
It doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of share performance. I t's been like this for a while. I f we think, if we don't do an M&A deal, we'll miss that opportunity. If we didn't buy Peregrino, we would lose it. So it was the right moment to be aggressive on that front. People would say, but instead of buying Peregrino, why don't you buy back the shares? Because if we buy back the shares, we won't buy Peregrino. And share buyback will be available if this asymmetry persists, as it is the case. Nelson, would you like to add anything?
[Foreign language]
Can you hear me? Is the microphone on? I think that Roberto put this really well. We always kept an open mind to define a structure and the basic pillars of when we would consider paying dividends. And the moment arrived, but capital allocation, creating value in scenarios of adverse Brent prices, one has always marked us.
We started the company in 2015 with oil costing $70, trending down to $60. 2016, 2017 were worse, so the values are identical. The only difference now is that we would like to have a well-defined policy, but still preserving the solidity of our balance sheet and flexibility. If oil prices drop, we'll always be in a situation of safety operating with good safety margins. If M&A opportunities arise, okay, and as we grow, it's all about IRR, and the bar is always up. When we identify an opportunity, we prepare for it, but our main point was creating value to our shareholders.
Our vision is a lot more than producing oil. We want to produce returns. That's what our track record shows. The M&As we pursued and we thought they were not worth our while, it's because either the timing was wrong, the time was wrong. When you have a doubt, you don't know what's going to happen to the oil price in the short term. We always have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. If oil prices drop, we have to be within our covenants. We have to have a solid and healthy balance sheet. And if an M&A opportunity arises and it's good, we have to be ready.
For a good business, asset good, price good. A good asset, bad price, not good, a nd good asset, bad timing, not good. So these are the rules. And we were considering a very interesting asset that we really liked, but it came at the wrong time. The time was wrong. With all the respect we had for the seller, we are not going to comment on it because we respect them, but we always have to prepare. We are always prepared for the downtime, for the moments when things are not that good.
As we got Frade, what we can expect in terms of the Frade campaign, we kind of inverted it a little. If you will remember 2023, when we had our campaign, the next steps, the next wells would be Maracanã and Bertioga, those reservoirs. If we look at them, and they're kind of far away from Frade, a bit distant. It was going to be an expensive well to drill. We would have to lay the pipes and so on. People during 2024, mainly, which was a year when we didn't have great opportunities to drill, our team started reassessing the seismics based on the 4D seismic that we have from Chevron, plus reservoir modeling.
The team came to the conclusion that it makes more sense to have an infill campaign. It's not like a new well with 10,000 new barrels per day. It wasn't like that. It was something more contained. It's a well that is closer. We don't have to lay and install too many lines and with a lot more safety. They designed two wells to be drilled next year at Frade. These two wells cross several different infill targets. These different targets, I think there are five or six targets. We estimate to put four into production between the end of 2026, beginning 2027, and the remaining two in the beginning of 2027.
Then in 2027, the question will be, we will probably have Frade, we'll probably have ABL, Albacora, and we'll have to prioritize the business considering Frade and Albacora. Because you will remember, we had 11 wells planned for Albacora. Of the 11 wells at Albacora, three wells to be reconnected, to be worked over, and the rest would be wells to be drilled. Of the eight wells to be drilled, seven have already been identified by us. Arapuá is out of the question. So actually, we have more than we had in the beginning because considering we did, we had 11 plus 8. In the 8, there were two Arapuá wells. Arapuá is out. So now we have seven wells identified.
Albacora, I can't really tell you what the decision will be in terms of Frade or Albacora, the best risk return decision. But our strategy is once we get to 200,000 barrels next year, it is expected by mid-term, we'll start using Frade and Albacora to maintain that level. We won't be investing a lot of CapEx. We won't be handling a lot of major developments to get to 250 and then have a big decline. No. We want to use that reserve of wells at Frade and Albacora. And there's also Polvo. If Polvo does well, it opens up a frontier at TBMT. And we'll use all that to maintain production for the longest time possible.
[Foreign language]
Yes. I'm Tasso Vasconcellos with UBS. I'd like to thank you for the event and for the update. My first question is perhaps addressed to Nelson in terms of culture and processes.
Nelson, at the beginning of your speech, you talked about the process of creating a culture and the processes that the company lived through in recent years. Looking to the future, perhaps the company is at a whole new level with much greater production, perhaps a much bigger headcount. T he company is becoming a whole new company. H ow can we think about looking at the company in the future, maintaining the same base and the same characteristics that work really well so far, but at the same time preparing the company for a whole new level?
My second question, still on the stage of the company, perhaps addressed to Roberto, that's a discussion we've been having, Roberto, for quite a while now. That has to do with operational complexity, having several assets in-house at the same time. How should we look at PRIO today? It is a company with more assets in-house, but at the same time, operating efficiency has to remain high in all of the fields. I know I know I've been asking this question for a while, but I think that the timing now, post-closing of Peregrino, you know, could bring us an update. These are my questions. Thank you.
[Foreign language]
I think that the best way to answer your question about culture would be having another person answering because you will see that the values are identical for all of us here, not just people on the stage, but all of the managers of the company. I f at the most difficult moment we had this culture, now that we have things going in our favor, now it will work in terms of capital allocation. When we had very little, we allocated capital really well.
Now that we have more cash, we'll allocate it even better. But there's training involved, onboarding involved. This company is totally open space. Everyone sees one another. At the field, we try to have the same culture. Yes, it's a delicate balance between autonomy and following existing processes. But people always come first, never processes. Processes are important. They are in place. But good people are the ones that move the boats. When we look at other companies, other companies that do really well, what have they done that went wrong? We look at them. We study them consistently. I'm not going to mention any names. We respect them.
W e study models all the time. There's some degree of subjectivity and objectives, metrics. But what is the most difficult about a company's culture? The dream, the ambition. Everyone joining the company now has to want as much as we wanted in the beginning. So how do we create adequate incentives? It's very challenging. And I keep thinking about this. We speak a lot about this. Why is the PRIO managed to do everything we did when we had the most challenging beginning? When we compare to our peer companies, when we started in 2015, we had cash burn. We had a challenging asset, Polvo.
The whole industry going through an incredible stress moment to get to where we are today. If we look at all of the companies back then, they would never bet on us. Only we bet on us. So the most difficult thing was to maintain our culture, our drive. Now the numbers guide us. We only want to grow if it makes sense. Growing for the sake of growing never happened in this company. Because this would mean that we lost our technique. So I know it's a delicate balance, having ambition, having the incentives, because that helps a lot.
Having a budget, having free cash flow, preparing for moments when oil prices dropped, having incentives for everyone to perform to their best ability, transparency, monthly meetings to discuss results, meetings we have on Saturdays, sharing the results as we are doing now. W e open up for questions and answers all the time, and I can talk a lot along those lines. I can talk about the challenges, but what gives me comfort is that video at the beginning, 10 years, and we saw so many different people talking.
There are so many people seated here, and some are not here yet, but we always share the same dreams and the same ethics of always wanting to do the right thing. W e dedicated a lot of time. The fact that we are talking about culture and focused on culture gives me confidence that we'll always get there. Because we speak about this nonstop. We speak about results, stress scenarios, and culture. I talked about what I don't think is that good. We have a lot of good people, and we focus a lot on our people. T his is all, you know, part of the onboarding of the company. Roberto talks about it, Francilmar talks about it, Newton. We put a lot of time and effort into that. And of course, profitability is important. Everybody, you know, we have to get there.
But I'm sorry for a long answer, but I hope I have addressed your question. Production or the complexity of the operation has to do with synergy. I mean, you can't just say, "I'll buy it right now. I'll buy an asset with 10,000 barrels a day." All right. I mean, I don't think this can be a good business. This will be a good deal because even though you say, "Oh, it's cheap," et cetera, et cetera, but this will also bring about a lot of losses. Even though the well was producing 10,000 and it could reach 80,000, that's another thing. W ould it make sense for us to buy another Polvo? Probably not.
This is pretty much what we look at. We are being now more selective. Now, we just had two M&As. There are two M&As happening as we speak.
And if we think that the return is not there yet, well, maybe it's not there. We are not even participating, so we don't know. So if we think that we're going to stretch the company too much to a level that it makes no sense, so we won't do it. We can just look at ourselves and see, "Okay, we have the shares of the company." I mean, if you're investing without doing anything else, it's the same risk. All we have to do is to buy back the shares. So the operating risk will be the same because it will be business as usual. This thought is what allows us to maintain things under control rather than doing something that can take us to somewhere out of control.
2024, we thought a lot about that.
Good afternoon. My name is Vicente from Bradesco BBI. Congrats on this event.
[Foreign language]
Tanure talked about a long-term view of the company of reaching 300,000 barrels a day. Is this an objective for the company in the long run, or does it depend on something else like Petrobras selling assets again? And my second question, going back to the compensation policy, why not establish a basic payout for shareholders? Of course, within the oil range. I f 200,000 barrels a day, the company is too large, you generate a lot of cash. Campos Basin today produces 400,000 barrels a day. It will be difficult to imagine another asset in the Campos Basin that PRIO wouldn't be able to internalize and at the same time have some basic payout.
Congrats on the event again.
[Foreign language]
Thank you, Vicente. I mean, we're not here to talk about different nuances or compensation possibilities.
But while we are just talking about things, and then we still have to work on this subject. We are trying to mature our thoughts and discuss that with the board. This is not a one-individual's Isolado decision. We have to take everything to the board. I mean, 300,000, it could be 500,000, a million. You can put whatever number you want. But this just shows the possibility and the desire to grow. Of course, if Petrobras decides to sell assets again, there are a lot of assets in the Campos Basin that could be sold. But today, this is not in the radar. Petrobras is not willing to sell anything. But we don't know what could happen in the future.
I mean, you could say, "Okay, my goal is to reach that and that amount of production." Every year, we set up a production goal, and every year, that is the most important thing. I mean, we had a dream when we produced 6,000. We wanted to reach 100,000. The only reason why we had a dream is that because everybody said that would be impossible. You're never going to make 100,000. Once you reach 100,000, you may become a large company. Okay, so we will reach 100,000. That was back in 2015. But we are never saying that we want desperately to reach that mark. Because if you do that, you may not engage in the best opportunities.
You have to be flexible enough to let go of a transaction. As I said, there are two things that are happening now. That we are not engaged in these transactions because we decided that that was not a good time to do it, b ut then you do, if I do that, I may not fulfill my strategic plan, which is to reach 500,000 barrels a day. W e talked about reaching that number. T his is not binding. W hat Nelson said about reaching 300,000 is just as simple as saying, "Okay, it took us eight years to reach 100,000." The second 100,000, it took us three. Maybe the next 100,000, it will take a shorter period of time. But if it takes longer, it's okay too.
The important thing is that we have to generate returns, right? I would just like to add one more thing. On the operating side, everything we did in the past 10 years, I mean, we got some very challenging fields. Some of those have been through many issues that people thought there would be no solution to the problems. But we acquired the fields and we put them to operate, and we added them to our infrastructure in a very constructive way. There is the side of operating excellence. I mean, all these fields are performing quite well. And the non-obvious thing is the way we generate value, the way we create value.
We are very good at arbitraging things. It doesn't necessarily mean that if you pay more, you did a good business. Most of our business was bilateral. We invested a lot of time. It took us years to get there. And we only gave the staff the size of our league. W e always went beyond the limit for allocations that we create good value despite a stressed Brent scenario. I mean, we are not here to produce barrels, but yet results. As the bar goes up, we go up with it. It is just more of the same here. The focus is to create value and to remunerate our base doing good business all the time. Not any business for the sake of it.
[Foreign language]
I'm Monique from Itaú BBA. Thank you for this event and the opportunity to ask a question. I have two questions. First, I would like your help to consolidate all of the initiatives that you mentioned, the different wells and interventions, and how that can be translated into CapEx for 2026 and 2027. And where do you expect your production to be in 2027? And my other question is about Wahoo. During Picarelli's presentation, he referred to learnings from the first well and the possibility of adding a Fishbone to the second well.
The lesson learned, can it be replicated to the next wells? Are we seeing a different way to drill the next wells? And my question stemming from the first one is whether we should expect something different from the Wahoo wells, or you still remain firm in the expectation of 10,000 barrels?
Starting with the CapEx part of the question, CapEx in 2025 should be close to $450-$500 million. Sorry, CapEx for 2026. Now, CapEx for 2027 should drop a bit because in 2026, we still have to conclude Wahoo, etc. And then in 2027, this CapEx should be down a bit, something around 450 million barrels. But please do not use that as a guidance. This is more like an idea, you know, that we never give CapEx guidance. But these numbers would be enough for us to continue drilling Albacora and Frade.
Most likely, maintain production at around 200 barrels a day. Now, about the Fishbone, the idea has always been to drill with Fishbone. I mean, we bought that years ago. I'm not saying that there was a reprogramming because that was the original idea. In fact, I mean, I even ventured to say, I mean, some people are looking at me and asking, "What is he going to say next?" I mean, maybe we wouldn't even need the Fishbone in the second well, but this was something that we bought way back then because we wanted to have a cushion. One of the potential risks we had at the reservoir is that it was closer than what we anticipated.
That's why, I mean, I think you went to Norway, right? This started, I was studying something for Polvo.
But then in the beginning, in the middle of the Wahoo project, we saw that it would be a way to ensure that not only would we overcome difficulties in the reservoir, but also it would improve drainage. So right from the beginning, we decided that we would use that starting in the second well. The first is not because, you know, the condition was poor, but we had to analyze it further. So from the very beginning, we said, "Let's do the first one, let's collect the data, and then we would do the same in the second and third wells, and then the carbonates." Production average, I mean, when you think about the reservoir, some wells will produce more and other less.
I mean, our number is 4,000 barrels for Wahoo. Well, we are not going to look at it per well. One produced 10, the other 12. So let's generalize.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon. I'm Regis Cardoso with XP. Congratulations on this event. Yeah, I'm right in the back here. I'm in the dark. Two questions have been answered. So from the questions that have been answered about your dividend policy, maybe you should take it to the decision-making team. I don't know whether you already talked about benchmark, best practices, or maybe if you discuss things that you like or you dislike, or what could be applicable to PRIO. Now, about CapEx, my question was going to be on maintenance CapEx.
I understand that the 450 for 2027 will be a good proxy to find out what would be necessary to maintain production at that level. And the original question is on Wahoo.
What do you think about the initial production and whether you think that if the reservoir has more potential, maybe I could maximize its lifespan in a timeline, whether you see that there is a potential to do more or if there is a downside risk? I would just like to hear your views on this first phase of Wahoo.
Wahoo's initial production is 100% defined by the reservoir engineering area. This is the number that maximizes the recovery factor in the field. No more, no less. More than 40 or less than 40, et cetera. But there is a technique. And myself and Francilmar, we don't have an opinion. I mean, as long as we follow the technique, it is what it is. There is nothing today that will lead us to say that it will tilt to one side or the other. People sometimes place bets in the company.
But this has no value whatsoever. And I won't be able to tell you, or no one can tell you, whether it's more or less or whether it is 40,000. I think that as we drill, we de-risk. We see positive news. We can say, "Okay, the well's productivity is slightly better than what we thought." And in addition to that, we put the Fishbone, which improves even further. So we are eliminating risks from the project. But we will only know for sure further on once it's in production. Now, about dividends, let's not get ahead of the game. I think that the main takeaway is that this is a subject for the board. I mean, it's not saying I like Company A, Z, or B. It's nothing like that. And the third question has to do with maintenance.
When I give CapEx figures, I'm thinking about something close to $100 million. This is maintenance CapEx just to keep our assets going, our facilities going. So these numbers take into account, you know, maintenance CapEx. Mostly focusing on operating efficiency, you know, replacement of ESPs pumps that sometimes, you know, do not work anymore.
[Foreign language]
Caio Ribeiro with Bank of America. Thank you for this opportunity. My first question is about, you know, net debt, your leverage levels. You talked about Wahoo and with the entry of Peregrino that the company will generate more cash now. So looking forward with a stronger cash generation, my question is whether you anticipate any changes in the leverage ranges of the company or whether you would go after a bigger transaction, even knowing that with this more robust cash generation, if this leverage would come more naturally and faster.
Secondly, when we look at new fronts, the question is whether today, considering the way PRIO is today, if the company is prepared to look for new fields or to participate in different assets, and what would be the criteria you would follow to identify assets that have something to do with your current assets.
[Foreign language]
Speaking about leverage, net debt to equity ratio, something would be below one, one-time net debt to EBITDA ratio. Today, we are like 1.3. So if we reduce our leverage, our strategy is to reduce leverage to one-time net debt to EBITDA ratio. If we don't do anything, if we don't pay dividends, etcetera, this will go down to one-time, even before that, maybe in the first half of 2027. But we will extend a little bit more and get to something like one-time at the end of 2027.
This delta is what we will use for, you know, to do the buyback. But a number that is comfortable to us would be a leverage below one. We could even say with a higher oil price. I mean, if oil goes to 80 or 70, it's 60 now. Maybe it's even below. It could be even lower than one. But this is a number that gives us a very good degree of comfort. But considering a potential acquisition, it could reach 2x . This is what happened until Peregrino. The second part of Peregrino, 60% that we acquired from Equinor, happened slightly before we anticipated. We thought it would take us longer to conclude the transaction. And that's why our leverage went to 2.3. It will reach 2.3. But this is not where we want to be. We want it to be low.
So when we have another transaction, it will go up a bit. Now, speaking about other locations, in Brazil, we like the Campos Basin. And as I said to many of you in several occasions, there is only one jurisdiction that is interesting for us, and that's the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, the US portion of it, which is the Gulf of the Americas. This is a good jurisdiction on the regulatory side and also in terms of its geology. Having said that, we haven't seen any other transactions happening there with the desired return. We look at a desired return with a $60 barrel. And we haven't seen this return in that area. We look at all of the transactions that occurred in that area. But this is a condition. If this return is not there, we won't go. I mean, that's all we know how to do.
We're looking at the Campos Basin. We will continue to be curious about the Gulf of Mexico, but with that caveat, which is the desired return that for the time being is not there. Looking at the leverage issue again, we have to have low leverage with low price of oil. If our leverage is good, but the price of oil is high, that will be a problem. We have to be ready to have low leverage, low price of oil, and even all the components are important. If you look at maturities of our obligations, they are way ahead. PRIO's maturity dates are over, you know, 2027 and forward. If you look at liquidity and maturities of our obligations, this is something that we monitor and manage very closely. Not only is it important that we have a lower oil price, but liquidity also matters.
Now, establishing a connection between the questions, we also look at the complexity of the assets. The company is evolving very quickly in terms of its technical capacity. 2024 and 2025 allowed us to be a very robust company. So today, when we look at an asset, we just analyze something in the Gulf of Mexico, and we have to see that whatever we have today is very compatible with anything else in the world, and this allows us to analyze things with a good degree of safety, so if we find something that we can manage well, I mean, we acquired many things throughout our acquisition journey. Things are improving. The criteria involve, you know, attractive returns, and if it makes sense and if it is not going to hurt the company, then we'll go for it. Otherwise, we won't go for it.
[Foreign language]
Good afternoon. I'm Milene from JP Morgan. You opened this event saying that the cost we control, but we cannot control the cost of oil. So I would like to go back to Peregrino. You are now taking over the operation. You announced more than $300 million in savings. If you could elaborate more about what is next, and as operators, what kind of opportunities do you see ahead? Could we see production acceleration, changes in FPSO, and even in that reserve that you mentioned? Thank you.
Here, the $300 million for Peregrino in terms of cost reductions, this is divided into three pillars. I mean, I'll say four pillars. SG&A, the overhead of the company, which we're done with. In Peregrino, many of the decisions were made outside the country. These decisions would require overhead allocation, which was very heavy on top of the asset.
So this is over once we change the location of the company. This is close to $70 million a year. There is a second synergy that is worth $30 million a year. G abriel mentioned that. That is logistics because we'll start sharing, you know, vessels, helicopters, logistic base, etc. This will happen until January of next year. There is another thing that involves an integrity project that is coming to an end. This is not our idea, but it's a project that is approaching its conclusion. They brought a floatel, is a hotel, floating hotel that is near the platform, near the asset with a lot of people, 400, 300 people. And all of these people increase the work capacity.
T hey are in charge of the integrity work. We did that in Peregrino with all the platforms. The last platform is to be concluded in January.
Once this is over, it's over. Our strategy is a bit different. Equinor waited a long time. They did a huge campaign. We have a campaign every five years. We just did Frade. There will be another one next year. Every five years, we do a campaign like that. We spend $40 million. Then there is the last thing. This is worth $80 million. There is another one that is worth $120 million. That could be improved a bit depending on the trading promised by our colleague Gustavo. We want, I mean, this field is burning diesel today. The difference between diesel and gas is worth $120 million. This will be achieved, you know, in the second half of next year. This has to do with the deployment of the gas pipeline. Everything has its own timing.
There is no more risk related to the gas pipeline because the equipment has been removed from the bottom of the sea. It has been recovered, so there is nothing unknown, but this is something that will be implemented in the second half of next year, and at that time, our Peregrino cost will be around $250 million, and this will dialogue with a barrel price of $8-$9, approximately, give or take. There was another question. Oh, there was a question about opportunities, and Roberto, in addition to the expenses area, we want to replicate in Peregrino what we did in Frade. The offtake in Peregrino was only 700,000 barrels, so why can't we increase that?
Moreover, the VLCC studies, like the ones we did in Frade, if we can do the same thing in Peregrino, we can also replicate the strategy to expand it to Peregrino and do the offload to Peregrino. On the geology side, in Peregrino, you have the carbonates as we did in Polvo and TBMT. We also see that possibility. We will go after it. There is the Isolado, the Isolada. We would do that early this year. We start drilling early next year. This will add reserves for both. We are also looking at two large projects in Peregrino. One is the possibility to connect Peregrino with Bravo. The name of the project is Bravo with Bravo. So we want to connect Peregrino with Polvo and TBMT.
If we think on the geology side that it makes sense, if the upside makes sense, and if it makes sense to connect both platforms and to take, you know, connect everything and use Peregrino with Peregrino A and C, we'll do it. The other thing we are looking at, I mean, these are just ideas, concepts. The other aspect we are looking at carefully is the possibility to electrify Peregrino, Polvo, and TBMT. To put all of them together and electrify it with, you know, the land. There will be a drop in cost as well because all of these fields consume a lot of diesel and gas. If we can do something more economical coming from the onshore, that could be interesting.
[Foreign language]
Okay. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I'm Eduardo Muniz with Santander.
I think your remarks were very clear in terms of cost management. Lifting cost is a very good hedge for the company. With the exception of Peregrino, where else, Roberto, do you think that you could have potential cost cuts? And looking at 2026, how should we look at the lifting cost curve? And if the company is running at 200 barrels a day, what would be the lifting cost level?
What we see in terms of cost reduction is in Peregrino. And the other possibility is Wahoo, because once we start producing 40,000 barrels a day, Wahoo's marginal cost will be $1 per barrel. And once it starts producing, we will see a significant drop in the consolidated lifting cost of the company in the first quarter of next year.
I mean, this fourth quarter will still be closer to $13, the same as last quarter, or close to last quarter. We will try to get something a bit better, but it should be around $13 because we're still carrying over two weeks of stoppage that started that was in October. So even though, I mean, most synergies are already happening in Peregrino for December, we still have to wait and see how things will evolve. In the first quarter, Peregrino will run with most synergies. It will be we will run at about $10-$11 per barrel. That will be a scheduled maintenance that will probably deviate a bit from this number, but this will be a regular number. So once Wahoo comes in and gas import from Peregrino comes in in the half of next year, we will approach something like $8. This is our idea.
I would say that with 200,000 barrels a day, we should run about $7-$8 per barrel. This is the number for lifting cost.
[Foreign language]
Hello, I'm Victor from Opportunity. I have a slightly more specific question. Thanks, Mark. Perhaps you can help us. On that slide, when you show a cross-cut of Wahoo field, I'd like to understand whether I understood it right. But the impression I had is that the broad two oil-water contact is a little higher. Does this in any way reduce the effective net pay that you can have? Although it was a higher net pay? That's the only question. Thank you.
No, no. The contact is the same. Right, Yuri? Right, Rafael? All of the wells at Wahoo, there were seven. And the two new ones matched the other seven. So there's no fear regarding contact. It's all sorted out.
We were kind of worried about compartmentalization if a block was up or down. But in our test, we confirmed everything is fine. So it's one single tank, one single reservoir. Nothing changed.
[Foreign language]
Hello. I am Conrado Vegner with Safra. Thank you for the presentation. I'd like to hear from you. Does it make sense to have a farm out without loss of the operation or the field to enjoy an interesting M&A opportunity that arises and that you might miss and more in the long term? Do you see PRIO getting to a stage where PRIO would be selling assets that would bring less opportunities of growth?
Thank you, Conrado. You know, we never say never, but I think it is hard. We have sold an asset, Manati. And Manati did not have much to do with us. It was in the north.
But anyway, if somebody offers $3 billion for Polvo, you may take it. Fine. Take it. But I think it's all about return. And we can still get a lot out of the asset. Well, of course. Any opportunity we'll consider. But we are a player at this stage. Our asset with the shortest lifespan is Polvo, which is 2035, a nd then Frade, Albacora, it's all 2040, 2050. So these assets have a long lifespan ahead of them. Close to abandonment, it might make sense to sell. But then we would be a different type of company. There are many companies in the US. They buy pre-abandonment. They buy a field pre-abandonment. They produce a little more, and then they let go. But the Safra case, and today, I wouldn't bet on that.
I think the case is to continue to extend the lifespan of the assets, continue to develop them, continue to grow the company, looking at the possible synergies Peregrino, Polvo, with TBMT. That's why we are not thinking about selling a minority stake. That's one of the reasons we like to hold 100% of the asset. If we want to connect Polvo with TBMT, with Peregrino, we can do it. It's easy. You own 100% working interest. But if I have somebody holding 20%, this player, this partner will be arbitrating. They will be, you know, complicating things. Then it's more difficult to obtain synergies. But I think it's very difficult that what you mentioned will happen. Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation, A nd thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. One specific on ABL.
It's a question I've had in my mind for a while now. I'm trying to understand to what extent the plan, and you talked about number of wells, drilling, redevelopment of the field, to what extent is it different than what was implicit in the reserves certificate of the field? Because I understand that was Petrobras project back then. Did anything change? And if so, for the better or the worse? Why explaining a fewer number of wells initially? That's my first question. Second question is more conceptual. I'd like to get your take on oil prices because we recently saw a more pessimistic narrative for 2026, a possible oversupply, etc. And I'd like to understand, in your opinion, what do you see for the commodity next year?
Deriving from that, you see, the reason I'm asking is because this narrative, they estimate an oil price that would be way below $60 per barrel, which guides the company's decisions. Is there any oil price that would delay your initiatives in your pipeline? As regards ABL, way back when we acquired the field, we said that we had a revitalization plan that would add 30,000 barrels a day. Things remain exactly the same. What we are doing is corroborating the plan with 4D seismic, with more studies, etc. That includes Arapuá, post-salt wells, completions, and everything else.
Nothing has changed. It's exactly the same thing. What happened at ABL is everything got delayed. Everything took longer until we got the efficiency of the FPSO at 95%. Since efficiency of the FPSO all the way to production, everything took longer. On the other hand, we got a better oil price. When we did the math back then, the oil price was $60. For some years, the price was above $60. So I cannot really tell about the return, but the change was not very marked. As for oil price and expectations in that regard, $60 per barrel, in our opinion, hurts. Brent at $60 per barrel means a WTI at $58, $57, and it hurts shale.
Today, shale oil is in the hands of the majors. Most of the shale oil is in the hands of the majors. And they have a slightly different dynamic than the previous cycle. The previous cycle was smaller companies. They were hedged. They would raise capital and hedge it. Now the majors, in most of the cases, they are not hedged.
So this decision is made a lot faster of saying, "Okay, I'll stop investing. I'll reduce CapEx, et cetera." When smaller players were hedged, they wouldn't do it because they were hedged to pay the debt they needed to produce. So they kept producing. And all of that hedge was finished. We had a huge oversupply with low price, and several players went bankrupt, and they were acquired by the majors. So I think that we can see oil below 60. It is possible. We don't estimate oil prices. It's 60 today. We use 60 because 60 seems to be a level at which we won't continuously have a price below that. It's like a cutoff. It's a barrier.
Can it get to 50? Yes. Can we have a one-off moment when it gets to 50? Of course, that can happen.
I don't think that we can have a sustainable price below $60 because shale oil will start reducing and that price will start dropping and that will bring the oil prices up again. It seems to me that the balance price would be a WTI close to $57-$58. That's a price at which many producers in the United States break even. That's why we use $60. It's not because we estimate or predict or nothing of that sort. It's just that it seems a threshold that makes sense in the long run. Stopping projects for 2026? No. Unless we have a huge problem, we can hold back Frade wells. We can postpone that. But then we would have to think about oil costing $20 or $30 a barrel. Then we can postpone Frade. For Wahoo, we need $150 million to have Wahoo online.
It will come in with $1 per barrel of lifting cost. T here's no price of oil that would justify delaying that. For Peregrino, the transaction is done. W e just don't see it in our EBITDA yet because today, well, the deal is closed. We adjust the price until ANP approves it. So until July, we won't have a field EBITDA, but the price is adjustable. It's our field. Economics is ours.
[Foreign language]
I am Bruno Montanari with Morgan Stanley. Thank you for the event. A follow-up question on production and then a question. So net of external factors that you don't control, what would be a good metric of exit rate for 2026, 2027 according to the current drilling plan? And the other question is about subsea. There was a lot of constructive comments on the recovery factor for all of the assets.
When in a timeline could we see these initiatives translating into potentially an increase of reserves or even an increase of production of these assets over time? As for exit rate, we are producing 155,000, 157,000. So we'll exit at that level. Let's call 150,000 to round it up. But we are producing a little more than that. For next year, we should have an exit at 200,000 barrels. F or 2027, our work will be to maintain those 200,000 barrels daily. This is it. This is what we are pursuing of everything you saw here, our CapEx and everything else. That's what we are looking for, a nd there was another question that I can answer, if that's Omar.
We have work where we create more value, which is what we don't really give you detaILTs about is the development plan. There's a gigantic team.
We have many managers of the subsea equipment and production development team, and they architect these projects. They look for opportunities. It's their given. That's their challenge. To get ABL at around 20,000, how can we get to 35,000? That's their work. When will this happen? As soon as we have a good cost, which is economically and technically viable. It's almost like a basket of opportunities. This is something firm that becomes a reserve. People work here until we can change position. This will happen over time. Our goal, mainly in these gigantic fields, any field that has more than 1 billion barrels of oil in place is gigantic.
Our goal is that for all of these fields, we want to get above 25% recovery factor. Then we are coming to the end. A fter here, we'll be outside to continue to talk to you. But it's been a while since I've talked with you. So I just want to say it's been a pleasure being here. It's excellent to have this kind of exchange. We are always available. And from our standpoint, the dream remains. The will to work, the will to build our day-to-day pleasure to work remain. The company is full on Monday morning, and it's full on Friday evening. People like what we do. People have friends. Just out of curiosity, we have lunch every day together.
For 10 years, we have lunch together every single day. And we always have things to talk about, for good or worse. For more than 10 years, we've been having lunch every single day.
It's almost the same food every day, minimum food variation, except one can stand eating the very same things. But it's the same drive. We adjust, we adapt. There are more difficult moments, better moments. And we always believe that what we are doing will continue to bring us extraordinary results. We're not here to do the basics. We just have to do the basics. We stay home. We all have the intellect, and we believe that our work will lead to great results. The difficult moments have brought us this far, and we continue with the same intensity. So our dream is to be much bigger than we are. Is there risk? Yeah. Will there be return? Absolutely.
Our focus is to bring results, reduce barrels, produce results. That's necessary. That's our business, with safety, with sustainability, doing what's good for Brazil. The amount of taxes we pay, the social projects we support, cultural sports initiatives we support make us proud. What brought us this far is what's going to take us further. The feeling of work is identical when the company didn't have one cent and had a dream. Now that we have capital, the dream remains even more alive than ever. So thank you very much. I hope you have enjoyed it. We're always available. We are closing now, and we'll be outside if you want to take part of the happy hour.
Thank you very much.