Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - o&g

Nuvia is one of the leading provider of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) management services in the UK. According to the U.S. Geologists have recognized their presence since the early 1930s and use their presence as a method for finding petroleum systems. Much of the petroleum in the earth's crust was created at the site of ancients seas by the decay of sea life. As a result, petroleum deposits often occur in aquifers containing brine (salt water). Radionuclides, along with other minerals that are dissolved in the brine, precipitate (separate and settle) out forming various wastes at the surface, such as mineneral scales inside drilling and production pipe, sludges, contaminated equipment or components and produced waters.

The amount of new O&G related companies coming to Brazil continues growing and Norwegian companies are some of the most active in this respect. Innovation Norway, which is run by Norway’s Commercial Affairs Office at the Norwegian Consulate in Rio, has been highly supportive to Norwegian companies seeking to set-up in Brazil. NCE NODE, has a joint network project and is a Norwegian center of excellence, which has helped 25 companies to prepare for entry into the Brazilian offshore market. The network has now split into two. One network with four companies has already decided to establish a jointly-owned business in Brazil. The other network of eight companies are establishing a type of marketing network that is currently negotiating with companies in Brazil that can represent them.

With headquarters in the UK, Wellstream has invested heavily in the Brazilian O&G market since 2007 and currently has an ongoing contract with Petrobras for around 700km of flexible pipes. They are the acknowledged leaders in flexible riser manufacture in Brazil.Wellstream is a world leader in design and manufacture of flexible pipeline products, systems and solutions for fluid transportation in the O&G industry. The business, founded in 1983 is headquartered in Newcastle, UK, with manufacturing facilities in the UK, Brazil and USA. The company has over 1,000 employees worldwide and also has sales and project offices in Canada and Australia. Flexible pipe products are used in many offshore field developments, but particularly where floating production vessels are involved.

The Subsea Technology Laboratory (LTS), part of COPPE/UFRJ, was created in 1989 in order to supply the increasing demand for deep water technology. Among other important projects they may soon earn international certification for a fiber optic sensor calibration system.In its 20 years of activitiy, LTS has concluded fifteen graduate projects, fifty-five masters degree dissertations and nine doctorate thesis. Presently under way are two graduate projects, ten masters degree dissertations and nine doctorate thesis. The laboratory has published over one hundred articles and papers in national and international magazine and events. Around two hundred and twenty technical consulting reports have also been developed.

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.

The fisheries industry in Rio de Janeiro particularly and in Brazil in general, has historically received few investments from the government or the private sector. In reality, even fisheries monitoring, regulations and inspections are lax, at best. Many species have become basically extinct, such as the large lobster. This many soon begin to change. Recently the environmental secretary for Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Minc, announced that investments in fisheries and aquaculture will be included as part of the demands for local environmental licensing. This will be mostly directed to industrial environmental licensing in the north part of Rio but will eventually be an integral demand in all environmental licensing procedures along the coast of Rio.

This is true for all areas of the O&G industry and definitely highlights the importance of Brazil´s pre-salt E&P. The recent unrest experienced in Bahrain in the Middle East, the ongoing civil war in Libya, rampant attacks on oilfields in Nigeria and uncertainties in other WA countries, added to the drilling moratorium at the GOM may have a substantial influence in O&G related investments being increasingly channeled to Brazil. One of the consequences of the international unrest that is influencing an increase in investments in the Brazilian pre-salt, is the increase in world oil prices, which is at around $113 a barrel of Brent, with the latest rise directly resulting from the clashes in Libya and unrest in other Middle East countries…

The Orteng Group has been investing in turn-key solution for energy systems and automation and is now reaching out to rig module construction and O&G exploration in Brazil. Orteng AC Service, the technology branch of Orteng Engineering, has been introducing AUV´s, ROV´s and Manipulator Arms, through a partnership with ECA Hyatec. During the Rio O&G 2010, the Orteng booth was brimming with subsea tech products such as the AUV Alistar 3000, which is projected to undertake inspection missions using videos and a wide array of sensors up to a depth of 3000 meters. They also had manipulator arms on display and demonstrations of the equipment, including a manipulator arm serving champagne, just to show how precise the equipment is.

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.

Continuing the influx of foreign investments in Brazil´s O&G market, that has attracted investment groups from Europe, North America and Asia. Singapore state investment holding Temasek has recently acquired shares from Brazil´s Odebrecht Oil & Gas (OOG).Negotiations to conclude the deal have been going on for five months and the final agreement has been drawn whereas Temasek bought 14.3 % of OOG for $400 million. OOG´s main interest in the partnership was to attract capital in order to increase its international presence and expand it deepwater drill rig construction program in Brazil. OOG hopes that the new partnership will help it secure the $3.5 billion in investments it that planned for 2011-2013.

The 15th edition of the Rio Oil & Gas 2010 conference and convention broke all records of public and participants and is being considered the biggest and best edition ever. While it can be said that O&G was the main theme of the event, bio-fuels and the maritime industry also had a strong presence. The theme for this 15 edition of the Rio Oil & Gas was “From Petroleum to Bio-fuels: Integrating Knowledge and Increasing the Limits”. The numbers are really impressive, from September 13, when the event started, around 46 thousand participants from 51 countries passed through the 5 pavilions and 2 massive tents arrayed in the 37,000 m² of Riocentro convention center in Rio de Janeiro. There were over 1,700 exhibitors and 740 technical papers presented by researchers from 28 countries.

The two new discoveries in one well, announced by Petrobras last Thursday, strengthen the thesis pertaining to the possibility of the existence of a great reservoir beneath the salt layer of the Campos Basin. The Campos Basin pre-salt shows its potential even if volumes are less than at the Santos Basin, as various factors related to logistics, production timeline and development costs make this possibility very attractive to players and specially to Petrobras. As is widely known, the Campos Basin is presently responsible for over 80% of the Brazilian O&G production. The discoveries indicate the existence of hydrocarbons in both the pre-salt and the post-salt layers in a single well at the Barracuda field in the Campos Basin, 100km from the coast of  Rio de Janeiro.