Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - port

Considered by some to be the best Port in Brazil, the Suape Port and Industrial Complex has become infamous with environmentalists due to the fact that researchers has singled it out as the primary cause of shark attacks along the beaches fronting the city of Recife, due to the destruction of mangroves and reef for the construction of the port. Situated between the cities of Ipojuca and Cabo de Santo Agostinho, in the state of Pernambuco in the Brazilian Northeast, it has an area of 140 square kilometers and 13.5 thousand hectares in extension divided into Port, Industrial, Administrative, Ecological Preservation and Cultural Preservation zones.

Petrobras will launch a world first floating offshore oil terminal in order to be able to transfer oil to oil tankers offshore, beginning in 2014. Up until now the oil had to be transported through pipelines from the offshore rigs to the coast where tankers would load up the oil. It is expected that this new system will decrease oil transportation costs as tankers will be relieved from the high Brazilian port taxes, the tankers will also save up on their own bunker oil as the distances they will have to travel will decrease. The new system should be used mainly for export oil and will also probably be a hub for tankers coming to fill up on deepwater pre-salt oil.

This month the first serious experiment with wave energy officially begins in Brazil. The first wave energy plant in the country was installed in the northeast state of Ceará, more specifically in the port of Pecém, located 60km from the state capital Fortaleza and will be officially launched during the Rio+20 taking place in Rio de Janeiro. With the Brazilian coastline being 8,000km long, scientists from COPPE/UFRJ, estimate that with wave energy plants up and down the coast the country could produce up to 87 gigawatts of which 20% could conceivably be converted in electricity, this would add up to 17% of the country´s total installed electrical energy capacity.

The Ponta Negra Terminal (TPN) to be built at the south side of Jaconé Beach at Ponta Negra Point is to be one of the biggest ports in the country. DTA Engineering, responsible for the project, unofficially called the Pre-salt port and with an investment forecast of $5,4 billion in an area of 557,2 thousand square meters, is expected to link oil & gas pipelines from the Pre-salt plays to the Petrochemical complex of the state of Rio de Janeiro (Comperj), which is located in the nearby city of Itaborai. The project includes a port, a ship and rig maintenance shipyard and a refinery. Authorities consider the location ideal due to the fact that the point has a natural depth of 30 meters.

As Petrobras announces that it will go through with five more deepwater pre-salt drilling projects this year, totaling 16 pre-salt wells drilled in 2010, a number which will probably increase in 2011 and more pre-salt, deepwater and shallow water plays keep being uncovered, new shipyard and new port projects are getting underway to make up the some of the infrastructure deficit in Brazil.OSX has finally defined that its shipyard will be build next to the Açu Port and Industrial Complex in the northeast coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The final decision was decision was based on the competitive advantages of UCN Açu, as attested by the results of comprehensive engineering…

Located in São João da Barra, about 4 hours north of the city of Rio de Janeiro, the Açu Superport is a private mixed-use port terminal that will have 10 docking berths; four for iron ore, two for oil-handling, one for coal and three for steel products, slag, granite and pig iron.LLX, established in March 2007, is the port terminals logistics company of the EBX Group. Since the company started, they have been building two large, mixed use ports, strategically located in southeast Brazil, this area represents approximately 75% of Brazilian GDP. These terminals are expected to be as good as the most modern port terminals anywhere in the world. The Açu Superport will have a depth of 21 meters, and a bridge 2.9 kilometers long and will allow the mooring of Chinamax vessels with 400,000 DWT.