Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - operators

A major opportunity for new business and new joint ventures was the prime result of the 2012 edition of the Rio O&G. Brazil’s National Petroleum Organization (Onip) believes the event may have been a catalyst for R$ 152,8 million (US$76,4 million) in new business for the next twelve months. A study made by Onip with companies present and the Rio O&G 2012 showed that 84% of these companies expected to undertake some for of new business opportunities in the near future. A total of 13 foreign and 17 local O&G companies negotiated to form joint ventures in the industry, of these 13 expect to close a deal on new joint ventures in the near future. These include local companies and companies from Canada, U.S, England, Argentina, Italy and France.

Brazil has been investing in a major effort to increase its exploratory O&G campaign along the countries coast and also inland where major gas reservoirs have been recently located. Unfortunately, this is still not enough as presently Brazil is exploring only 4% of its areas with O&G potential. Of the 7,5 million square kilometers of sedimentary basins located in the country, only 7% have actually been researched, including all the recent major pre-salt discoveries. This points to major untapped O&G potential in the country, the numbers are impressive and point to a need to increase even more the research and exploration of the huge areas still untouched. This further increase in exploration brings various safety and environmental risks along with it.

With the sharp increase in ship and shipyard construction, port construction and port safety awareness, all prompted by the mayor pre-salt and post salt oil discoveries off Brazil, many new local service companies, specialized in subsea services have been launched. Some of them are actually developing, Work Class ROV´s in Brazil using foreign or even locally developed technology. There has also been a marked demand increase for smaller ROV´s to be used in various fields including video inspection, side-scan sonar mapping, marine environmental research and training. It is likely that demand for small AUV´s will be increasing steadily as they can be very useful for environmental research…