Testing and gathering data from a well to evaluate the potential of a new field is a common practice in the oil and gas industry. However, performing this task in a subsea environment to test a well in ultra deep water presents significantly greater challenges to the operator and service providers. Since testing in the depths required for the subject well had not previously been attempted, there were concerns of problems that might occur in maintaining response times and control of the test equipment. This paper will present the innovative solution that was devised to perform the evaluation testing in the deepest offshore producing well in the world (1,853 meters or 6,079 feet) from a drill ship with conventional subsea equipment. The equipment, the well, location conditions, and procedures that were used to safely and efficiently perform the evaluation testing will be discussed.To date, this has been the deepest well in which this function has been successfully performed. From the well testing data gathered, the Petrobras Reservoir Engineering and Geology Departments were able to determine production potentials, which indicated that this was the most important discovery of the last few years, as well as to obtain information that would be invaluable for field development. It is anticipated that the field will have an estimated oil production of 180,000 BOPD and 4.8 mm m 3 of gas by the year 2,000.

Testing and gathering data from a well to evaluate the potential of a new field is a common practice in the oil and gas industry. However, performing this task in a subsea environment to test a well in ultra deep water presents significantly greater challenges to the operator and service providers. Since testing in the depths required for the subject well had not previously been attempted, there were concerns of problems that might occur in maintaining response times and control of the test equipment. This paper will present the innovative solution that was devised to perform the evaluation testing in the deepest offshore producing well in the world (1,853 meters or 6,079 feet) from a drill ship with conventional subsea equipment. The equipment, the well, location conditions, and procedures that were used to safely and efficiently perform the evaluation testing will be discussed. To date, this has been the deepest well in which this function has been successfully performed. From the well testing data gathered, the Petrobras Reservoir Engineering and Geology Departments were able to determine production potentials, which indicated that this was the most important discovery of the last few years, as well as to obtain information that would be invaluable for field development. It is anticipated that the field will have an estimated oil production of 180,000 BOPD and 4.8 mm m3 of gas by the year 2,000.