Ships Change Rio Scenery and Worry Environmentalists

Today when you go to any beach in the city of Rio de Janeiro and look offshore, the Cagarras islands aren´t the only thing you´ll see. It is now common to see dozens of ships moored offshore, waiting for a birth in the city port or even waiting for a contract to come up.

According to the Rio Port Authority (Companhia Docas do Rio de Janeiro), there has been an increase of 146% in the number of ships that arrive in the Rio port. In 2009, 1,568 ships docked in the Port of Rio, in 2010 this number grew to 2,374 and in 2011 it reached 3,861 ships. Estimates show that this year the increase will be tremendous with something around 10 thousand ships seeking the port of Rio. It is important to Note that the port can only hold 60 ships at a time and some of its births are already taken by Petrobras for FPSO and Rig maintenance.

At the beginning of the month there were over 60 ships moored in the Guanabara bay. The majority of these ships (45%) are PSVs, 28% are container ships, 14% are tankers, 5% are cruise liners and 3% are composed of various types of large cargo ships and 5% are made up of smaller cargo ships and roll-on roll-off car carriers.

Environmentalists are beginning to worry because there is no Coast Guard in Brazil. All patrolling is done by the Navy or the Federal Police and these have very limited assets. There is basically no environmental monitoring of these ships, especially the ones moored offshore. With such a great amount of ships moored offshore and in transit to and from Guanabara bay, some specialists in maritime safety are stating that it is only a matter of time for accidents to happen which may cause oil leaks from the ships that could devastate the pristine environment of the offshore islands, including the Cagarras, Tijucas and Maricas islands.

Ships crashing into each other are also a constant worry as there is a nearly continuous movement of ships entering and leaving Guanabara bay, which can be a tricky proposition during large swells. Recently, during the last major swell to hit Rio, 2 support vessels sank, including one that was supporting one of the rigs moored in the bay.

There is no serious contingency plan if there is an accident involving oil spills from the ships moored offshore and as mentioned before there are few assets available for monitoring these ships and even less for responding to offshore accidents and oil spills. At this point we can only hope no major accidents happen, but with such a major increase in port traffic set for this and coming years, hope alone will probably not be enough.

Claudio Paschoa