Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - complex

The launching of the Rio Grande Naval Complex completes another key project for pre-salt production, as the complex will house the hybrid pre-salt FPSO production line, which already has an order book for 8 units. Petrobras has launched today the Rio Grande Naval Complex, in the city of Rio Grande, southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. The complex is considered so vital to the Brazilian pre-salt production that the outgoing president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was in attendance. The complex consists of a 430,000 m² infrastructure designed for the construction and repair of offshore units for the O&G industry. The complex will be capable of building drillers and production rigs.

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.

The new facilities, including bold construction techniques, sustainability and eco-efficiency, represent an advance for Petrobras’ technology development. With the expansion the complex on Fundão Island will occupy more than 300 thousand m² making it one of the largest centers of applied research in the world. There will be various laboratories designed to meet the technological demands of Petrobras’ business areas, in particular, the laboratories of Biotechnology, Environment and Gas & Energy stand out. The expansion will also include modern laboratories dedicated exclusively to meeting the demands of the pre-salt projects. The CENPES expansion is part of a Petrobras strategy to expand the experimental capacity of the Brazilian technological park.