Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - rio

The last day of the Rio O&G conference began with an early morning presentation on the possible uses of Nanotechnology for O&G exploration and advanced oil recovery. The sector, with the support of IBP (Brazilian Petroleum Institute) has been working on a Nano Agent capable of increasing the average oil recovery by 20%. According to Rustom Mody, Vice-Presidente of Technology at Baker Hughes, presently 60% of nanotechnology patents are from the U.S. and Canada and the number of patents has greatly increased in the last 10 years, with the market experiencing a major growth since 2009. The market presently involves values of over US$ 9 billion, up from the US$ 4,5 billion of 5 years ago.

The latest edition of the Rio O&G 2014 Expo and Conference is easily the biggest installment ever of the largest O&G event in Latin America. Many foreign participants were saying that it was the one of biggest even they’ve seen anywhere and also one of the most well organized. Praises were also lavishly handed out to the quality of the technical presentations, lectures, panels and digital poster sessions. Important developments for the industry have also been announced during the event, such as the news that Brazil’s thirteenth bidding round will take place in the first semester of 2015 and Shell’s Executive Vice President Mark Shuster’s much commented speech…

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.

The O&G service provider is giving priority to investments in Brazil as part of its worldwide investment strategy. Studying the Deepwater Pre-salt Carbonate Systems in Brazil is one of their main priorities. With the expected growth of Brazil´s current O&G production from 2 million boe to 5 billion boe by 2015, industry service providers are feeling the necessity of making local investments proportionate to this expected growth. Schlumberger, as a leading service provider in the O&G industry has been quietly expanding its operations in Brazil through investments in local infrastructure and in aggressively pursuing highly qualified technicians and engineers.

With the intention of making a more efficient pre-salt FPSO production in Brazil, Petrobras had selected the Rio Grande Shipyard works and dry-dock to be their FPSO production center. There was still a need for a tender process to select which local company would be responsible for the construction process of the first 8 FPSOs to be built from a total of 40 FPSOs originally calculated to be needed for the pre-salt development. These units are part of the new strategy for the construction of production units, designed to simplify projects and standardize equipment. Producing identical hulls in series will accelerate the construction phase, and allow economies of scale and cost optimization.

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.

With the continuous increase of subsea equipment and services companies setting up in Rio de Janeiro, including local companies, The State Government, through its State Office for Local Development (Secretaria Estadual de Desenvolvimento Econômico), has decided to create a subsea center in order to stimulate the sector and bring investments to subsea technology suppliers eyeing the Petrobras orders. Today there are around 35 subsea companies located in Rio (8 offering equipment and 27 offering services). These companies have a workforce of almost 1,200 employees, and the idea behind the subsea center is to attract suppliers and investors for these companies.

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.

This month the first serious experiment with wave energy officially begins in Brazil. The first wave energy plant in the country was installed in the northeast state of Ceará, more specifically in the port of Pecém, located 60km from the state capital Fortaleza and will be officially launched during the Rio+20 taking place in Rio de Janeiro. With the Brazilian coastline being 8,000km long, scientists from COPPE/UFRJ, estimate that with wave energy plants up and down the coast the country could produce up to 87 gigawatts of which 20% could conceivably be converted in electricity, this would add up to 17% of the country´s total installed electrical energy capacity.

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 “Toninha” as small dolphins of the Pontoporia Species are called in Brazil are part of the Group denominated Odontocetos Cetacean. It is one of the smallest existing species of dolphins. Its coloration varies from pale gray to light yellow with its lower part being lighter. Their face is visibly elongated and it has more than 200 teeth. Their eyes are small and so is their dorsal fin, when compared to other species of dolphins. Its dorsal fin is also rounded at the extremities. The full name of the species is Pontoporia blainvillei. Today there are only 2,000 toninhas left off the coast of the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo. This number represents less than half of the minimum population number considered safe. The safe population number is around 5,500 individuals.

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.

Paulo Mendonça, CEO of OGX stated that the first quarter of 2011 was very important for the Brazilian operator. OGX has been intensifying the campaign to appraise its discoveries in the Campos basin, where 16 wells have been spud since the beginning of the year, of which 10 are appraisal wells for the accumulations Waikiki, Pipeline and Illimani (Campos Basin) and Fazenda São José (Parnaíba Basin), with the intent of converting 3C contingent resources into 2C and 1C, and thereafter into reserves. -Delivering the vital and time sensitive declaration of commerciality to ANP (National O&G regulator), related to the discoveries in Campos, Santos and Parnaíba Basins.

Petrobras has decided on a novel way to transfer pre-salt oil to export and local market tankers from a maritime operations base. The projects named “Unidade Offshore de Transferência e Exportação”  (UOTE) or Offshore Transfer and Export Unit (OTEU), will work as a floating port terminal. Due to the distance from land of pre-salt plays such as Tupi, which is nearly 300km from the nearest coast. The national operator chose to use an DP enabled FSO anchored in shallow waters, 80 to 90km from the coast Rio, in around 70 meters of water to receive and store production oil from shuttle tankers loaded at the production FPSOs, over the pre-salt plays. The FSO will have a capacity to store 2 million barrels of oil and will be connected to underwater pipelines.

As Petrobras announces that it will go through with five more deepwater pre-salt drilling projects this year, totaling 16 pre-salt wells drilled in 2010, a number which will probably increase in 2011 and more pre-salt, deepwater and shallow water plays keep being uncovered, new shipyard and new port projects are getting underway to make up the some of the infrastructure deficit in Brazil.OSX has finally defined that its shipyard will be build next to the Açu Port and Industrial Complex in the northeast coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The final decision was decision was based on the competitive advantages of UCN Açu, as attested by the results of comprehensive engineering…

According to Petrobras and many other players involved in the O&G market, Rio de Janeiro is the new oil capital of the world.Now that actually may come to be, but there is still a ways to go. As it is, we are all happy campers down here. It is not hard to tell that the simple possibility of this happening is blowing minds and aggravating some players, especially in Houston. The fact is that what goes up must eventually come down and that´s just the way it is. I must admit that for a Brazilian like me, a middle class wanna be, the numbers are quite thrilling. However, there is no running from the fact that the challenges are many. You can have all the oil in the world…

NAVALSHORE 2010 - Trade show and conference for the maritime and offshore industry to take pace next week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Organized in Rio de Janeiro since 2004, Navalshore has become the main event for the maritime industry in the Brazil. The 2009 edition gathered 259 companies from many countries such as:  United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, China, Italy, Singapore, Austria, Sweden, Poland, Norway, Finland, Chile, Denmark, Argentina, and Brazil. 12,600 professionals from marine construction and repairs attended the event. UBM as organizer of a number of the leading events in the maritime industry, all with international recognition…