By Jeffrey T. Lewis

SÃO PAULO--Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, said Friday it began the sale of 11 onshore oil concessions in the country's northeastern state of Sergipe.

The company released the information on the 11 concessions, all part of the Carmopolos production pole, for potential buyers to study. Petrobras is also selling the installations associated with the fields, which are all located in the Sergipe-Alagoes basin.

The sale is part of Petrobras's strategy of divesting non-core assets, including onshore fields, shallow-water offshore fields and stakes in gas and fuel distributors, among other things, to reduce its debt and focus its efforts on boosting production from its rich, deep-water and ultra-deep-water fields off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo states.

The company said earlier this week that it pumped an average of 2.95 million barrels of oil equivalent per day during the three months ended in September, an increase of 5.4% from the previous three-month period, as it boosted efficiency and ramped up output from new platforms in those fields.

The onshore fields that the company is selling include close to 3000 operating wells, 17 oil treatment stations and about 220 miles of oil and gas pipelines, among other installations. Average production from the wells in the first three quarters of this year was close to 10,000 barrels of oil per day and 73 thousand cubic meters of gas per day.

Write to Jeffrey T. Lewis at jeffrey.lewis@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

10-23-20 0912ET