The offshore field Marlim Leste was discovered in Janaury 1987 with the drilling of well 1-RJS-359 and subsequently abandoned. The field's development began with a pilot production operation from April 2000 to June 2002 through the completion and interconnecting of the 1-RJS-359 wells to P-26 platform. In December 2005, Petrobras confirmed the discovery of a new oil accumulation at the Marlim Leste field. The find was significant to the company because it was located in deeper geologic layers within the Campos Basin and inaugurated a new exploratory model for recovering lighter and better quality oil. Following initial development of the field, Petrobras announced that the P-53 platform, the first production unit installed in the Marlim Leste field, commenced operations. The P-53 unit has total production capacity of 180,000b/d of heavy oil and compressing capacity up to 6Mm3/d of natural gas. Module I of the field development includes a total of 21 wells: 13 producers and 8 water injectors. The FPSO Cidade de Niteroi went on stream in end-2008. This unit and platform P-53 compose the definitive Marlim Leste production system. Marlim Leste's module II operates in the field known as Jabuti, which began production in March 2009 and reached 35,000b/d by the end of the year.