Tanker Pacific Offshore Terminals was selected to build the first floating storage and offloading unit, also known as an FSO. The unit will be built from an existing tanker hull and installed about 80 kilometers off the city of Macae, Petrobras’s base of operations for the Campos Basin.

The long distance between the recently discovered and potentially massive presalt fields and Brazil’s Atlantic Ocean coast is one of the key logistical challenges faced by Petrobras to develop the ultra-deepwater reserves. While the company so far has installed a pipeline that reaches the Tupi field, Petrobras has been searching for alternatives.

Petrobras plans to build an Offshore Transfer and Export Unit, or UOTE, that includes the floating terminal, submarine systems and two single-buoys that would allow three ships to dock for loading and offloading, the company said. The terminal will have the capacity to store as much as two million barrels of crude.

It will take 18 months to convert the tanker into an FSO, with Petrobras agreeing to a lease of 25 years, the company said.

The presalt finds were made under a thick layer of salt in the Santos Basin off the coast of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro states. The oil is under more than 2,000 meters of water and a further 5,000 meters under sand, rock and a shifting layer of salt. Officials have estimated the presalt could hold as much as 50 billion barrels of oil.

Petrobras expects to produce 543,000 barrels a day from presalt fields by 2015, bringing total daily crude oil output to a little more than three million barrels. The additional production is expected to boost the company’s oil exports to nearly one million barrels a day in 2015, according to company officials.