What was the original name of the giant Brazilian offshore oil field discovered in 2006? Its original name was Tupi. Petrobras discovered the field in October 2006 in Brazil’s Santos Basin, in the pre-salt layer far beneath the Atlantic seabed.
The discovery was one of the world’s most significant petroleum finds in decades. Early estimates suggested billions of barrels of recoverable oil and gas, although such figures changed as appraisal wells and development studies refined the reservoir picture. The field lies about 250 kilometres off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and requires advanced deepwater technology to produce it.
The name later caused confusion. When commerciality was declared in December 2010, Petrobras renamed Tupi as the Lula field, a reference to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; the associated Iracema area was also renamed Cernambi. In 2020, following a legal and regulatory dispute, the field’s official name reverted to Tupi.
Búzios, Libra and Lula are therefore plausible distractors for different reasons: Búzios and Libra are separate pre-salt developments, while Lula was the field’s interim official name. For the discovery-era question, Tupi is the canonical answer.