Major Deepwater Contract with Petrobras Spotlights Subsea 7´s Enhanced Capabilities

The $1 billion contract awarded to Subsea 7 by Brazilian national oil company Petrobras, marks a new era in Subsea 7´s history. It is the first major (in terms of contract value) contract for the company after its merger with Acergy.

The contract is for development of the Guara and Lula deepwater pre-salt fields in the Santos Basin, over 300km from the coast of Rio de Janeiro, in water depth of around 2,200 meters. These plays are located in Block BM-S-9 and BM-S-11 respectively.

The EPIC (Engineering, Procurement, Installation and Pre-Commisioning) project scope consists of 4 decoupled riser systems featuring, four submerged buoys each of 1,900 tons to be installed at a depth of approximately 250 meters below the sea level buoy foundations and associated tethers and 27 steel catenary risers of 3.9km and associated pipeline end terminations (PLETs) of which 18 are 7.5” production lines, 3 are 9.5” water injection lines and 6 are 8” gas injection lines, and associated anchor piles and crossings. The engineering and project management work will commence with immediate effect and will be undertaken at Subsea 7 offices in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Fabrication of the rigid pipelines will be carried out at the pipeline manufacturing spoolbase, which Subsea 7 is developing at Paranaguá, in the southern state of Paraná in Brazil. Offshore installation is scheduled to commence during the second half of 2012, using Seven Oceans, Seven Seas and Skandi Seven.

These new capabilities developed by Subsea 7 along the last few years will be put through their paces during this project. It will be one of the first if not the first major project for the new Subsea 7 pipeline manufacturing plant, which is strategically located close to the southern tip of the Santos Basin and very close to the port of Paranaguá, which may not be widely known out of Brazil but is the 2 largest port in the country to date.

Not only will the new Paranaguá plant´s capabilities be tested, Subsea 7 will have to use a wide range of surface and subsea assets to get the job done and keep to its deadlines. These plays are considered of strategic importance to the development of the Brazilian pre-salt, as they are the first major pre-salt producers, and have been acting as test benches for all the other pre-salt plays already discovered. The 3 vessels involved will be supporting ROV operations, pipe laying operations, along with riser and buoy installation and testing. It can be said that this is one of the most important pre-salt projects to date as it will prepare the connections from the Aker subsea trees already installed to the FPSOs that will control production and distribution, therefore a vital link between the pre-salt upstream and downstream.

Claudio Paschoa