Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - accident

Brazilian national operator Petrobras had a scare with one of its drilling rigs off the coast of the state of Amapé, the northernmost state in Brazil, where the mouth of the Amazon River is located. Although the drilling rig did not completely loose from its mooring anchors, it did tip to one side in such a way that Petrobras was forced to abandon the well. This accident occurred in December 2012 but as yet the well continues plugged. With this development Petrobras was forced to ask the national O&G regulator ANP (National Petroleum Agency) for a longer deadline to be approved for its exploratory plan in the block located at the Amapá coast, in order to better study the very strong currents that occur in this region.

As fires blazed on an old Petrobras production rig at the Campos Basin on the 19of January, silence was the rule, as has always been the rule with such trivial emergencies such as a large fire on an oil rig. I must be thick or something, but I consider it strange that a major fire on an oil rig only comes to public notice nearly ten days after it happened. Actually I shouldn´t complain because normally these small accidents would never have become known. Hey, no one even died, right, that a failure on an oil transfer pump caused a massive blaze, including a full on electric fire, which took Petrobras´s onsite fire brigades all of half an hour to control, is no big deal! Now imagine that this kind of attitude has been going on for decades.