Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - growth

The new Triple-E class container ships are set to debut with Maersk livery. Maersk’s purpose in acquiring these behemoths is to take advantage of thier enormous capacity, which will enable Maersk to carry the greatest number of containers in the most energy efficient way, with the smallest CO2 footprint. Maersk thinks the time is ripe to order these new vessels as the annual market growth for Asia to Europe (westbound) trade is forecast to be in the 5-8% range during 2011-2015. The Triple-E’s design expanded the ship’s inside cavity, attaining a 16% capacity increase in comparison to the Maersk Emma (equivalent to 2,500 containers), despite relatively little change in length and width. The Triple-E is designed to transport more cargo without adding engine power.

In an importand development for Brazilian high-speed communications with the United States, U.S. based Seaborn Networks service provider is primed to lay a new system of submarine cummunications cable that will provide a direct route between the Unites States and Brazil. Set to go active in 2014, the new Seabras-1 submarine cable will offer 32 Tbps of capacity connecting Miami and Sao Paulo, with a branch that lands in Fortaleza, Brazil. The service provider's timing couldn't be better as the Brazilian government prepares to adopt a National Broadband Plan and the country is also preparing to host upcoming 2014 Soccer World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, which will drive greater growth of voice, video and data services throughout Brazil. The major increase of U.S.

Brazilian shipyards are trying to become internationally competitive in terms of product quality, pricing and keeping to deadlines. There are presently around 280 units in construction in Brazil, including PSVs, tankers and rigs, with a workforce of around 56 thousand and growing. The shipyards are full to capacity and even though there are over twenty new yards being built, there is still a demand for more. One of the main problems faced by these new yards is to maintain a high quality standard in order to compete with experienced foreign yards. This is no easy feat. However many of these new yards being built have some form of partnership with international shipyards, looking to enter the Brazilian market.

After SLB launching its geosciences lab late last year, 2011 starts with agreements to build Halliburton and Tenaris Labs at the UFRJ Tech Park, which is already considered the main technology research hub in Latin America.Halliburon and Tenaris Confac recently signed contracts with UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) to build laboratories within the university´s technology complex, which is located at Fundão Island in the north zone of Rio. Both companies will be building research facilities for development of new technologies for the O&G industry. They will join Petrobras, Baker Hughes, FMC, Usiminas and SLB who already have research labs installed in the area.

With the final voting of the new regulatory model for Brazil´s O&G market, Petrobras confirms it will control local development in order to let local industry catch up to the demand.The Brazilian O&G market development speed is directly dependent on the shipbuilding industry and the specialized equipment and services industry. The hard truth is that none of these local supporting industries are presently capable of supplying the Brazilian O&G demand and it is clear that it will take quite a few years for the local industry to catch up to this demand, even then in many cases, such as shipbuilding, this accelerated growth will only be possible through partnerships with leading international shipbuilders.