British energy company BG Group pulls more oil from Santos Basin off the coast of Brazil using floating production platform. Photo courtesy of BG Group

LONDON, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- British energy company BG Group said Monday it started producing oil from a basin off the coast of Brazil using a floating production platform.

The company said first oil was produced from the city of Itaguai floating, production, storage and offloading vessel, its sixth to start production from the Santos Basin off the coast of Brazil. The vessel will produce from part of the Lula field within the basin, operated by Brazilian energy company Petrobras.


"This is the second leased FPSO deployed on the Iracema development and will double the gross production capacity to 300,000 barrels of oil per day and 565 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from the area," the British company said. "The FPSO will also be able to store 1.6 million barrels of oil."

BG Group in May unveiled a number of disclosure mechanisms aimed at improving transparency and simplification of financial statements. The company said the measures would reflect the importance of Brazilian and other assets.

Development spending during the second quarter of 2015 was targeted primarily at Brazilian operations for the company.

The company said in its second quarter report, released last week, that underlying earnings declined to $429 million, compared with $1.2 billion one year ago. Exploration and production increased 19 percent to 703,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day