OSX looking at building drill rigs for Petrobras

With the work on its new shipyard underway, OSX, the shipbuilding and ship rental company belonging to the EBX Group, is planning on entering tenders in order to try and get a piece of the contracts for 21 drillers for Petrobras.  The OSX shipyard is being built within the Açu Port area (the Açu Port is also in construction and is also owned by the same EBX Group).

Sete Brasil is administering the construction of the 21 drillers, which will then be leased to Petrobras. Petrobras itself will oversee the tender process. Sete Brasil is one of the local companies participating in the tender and they have already been awarded the contract for construction of the seven first drillers, which are being built at the Atlantico Sul shipyard in the Brazilian northeast state of Pernambuco.

Sete Brasil is a recently established company, formed by the  Fundo de Investimentos e Participações –FIP Sondas (Investment and Participation Fund), which is administered by the Caixa Economica Federal (CEF), which is a Brazilian federal bank, holding a 90% interest in Sete Brasil. Petrobras is also present with a 10% share in Sete.

Petrobras plans to invest $224.7 billion between 2011 and 2015, with a good portion of this going towards building these deepwater drillers, which have never before been built in Brazil.

According to OSX, any tender involving the construction of drillers, FPSOs, MODUs and offshore vessels interests the company. OSX is investing 2 billion in the construction of the shipyard, which has HHI (Hyundai Heavy Industries) as a minority partner and will have the capacity to process 180 thousand tons of steel per year. The ambitious shipyard plans call for the OSX shipyard to be the biggest in the Americas. The stated priority of the shipyard is to build rigs, drillers and offshore vessels for OGX (the O&G exploration and developmentcompany of the EBX Group) but it is slated to have the capacity and conditions to supply demands from other clients, such as Petrobras.

Claudio Paschoa