Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - macondo

Finally, after much criticism from environmentalists, politicians and even from oil industry executives, the Brazilian government launches a comprehensive oil spill contingency plan. Ironically, the PNC (National Contingency Plan), is being launched one day after the giant Libra pre-salt field auction. It’s hard to understand why the PNC wasn’t announced before the Libra auction, especially if it was ready, as it must have been. The PNC plan, according to the biggest Brazilian newspaper O Globo, had been ready and shelved in a Brazilian State Department office for over one year. Interestingly, the plan was announced one day after this same newspaper alerted that the Libra field was going to be auctioned without any oil spill contingency plan ready.

Since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy in 2010 the industry has taken long strides in well control and well blowout containment. British Petroleum, having been directly involved in the accident at the Macondo well, was forced to look into a solution that would permanently seal the gushing deepwater well. However, even before they could come up with a permanent solution, BP needed to cap the well over the damaged BOP (Blow-out Preventer). This eventually took BP a few months to accomplish, yet using a large amount of engineering ingenuity a capping stack was manufactured which got the job done. Since at the time there was no off-the-shelf solution to capture the spilling oil straight from the BOP…

Where is the Petrobras Deepwater Containment System? Brazil today arguably has the largest deepwater drilling program in the world and most probably the biggest all around drilling effort in the world to boot. In 2011 alone 162 new wells will be drilled in Brazil, an all time high and a 30% increase compared to last year. Of these, 53 wells will be drilled offshore. It´s safe to assume that over 20% of these will be in deepwater pre-salt or deepwater post-salt plays along the Santos, Campos and Espirito Santo Basins. When Petrobras first announced this significant increase in their drilling program scope, a lot was said about expectations for more large pre-salt finds, increase in production, new drilling technologies, logistics problems and solutions and ultimately, profit.