Cenpes News

A new technology to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) is developing a demonstration scale in Shale Industrialization Unit (SIX) in Paraná, in partnership with Petrobras Research Center (Cenpes). Called CO2 capture, this technology is being tested in a prototype fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCC) - process that transforms heavy oil lighter oil derivatives. This is the first unit to preindustrial scale of FCC in the world using oxyfuel technology (replacement of air used in the combustion of fuels by pure oxygen) for capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) gas released during the industrial refinery processes. The FCCs are very important units in the production process of derivatives…

Electromagnetic Geoservices ASA (EMGS) has received a contract worth USD 1.5 million for a research project in Brazil. The project will use 3D EM data to map shallow gas hydrates in the Pelotas Basin. The project is a collaboration between the Pontifical Catholic University (PUCRS) of Rio Grande do Sul and Petrobras' Research and Development Center called CENPES. EMGS will support each stage in the workflow, from survey design and data acquisition to processing and interpretation. The company's services will enable the integration of EM data with seismic and other geophysical and geological information to give explorationists a clearer and more complete understanding of the subsurface. This improves exploration efficiency and reduces risks and the finding costs.

Brazil’s Petrobras has been one of the leading players in deepwater, subsea development projects since the turn of the century. These projects include pre-salt and post-salt plays, which require extensive and complex subsea engineering and construction efforts. It would be impossible for Petrobras to develop all of its projects alone, therefore much is done by specialized companies, mostly of foreign origin. “We could not have advanced in this project (pre-salt) conventionally, developing the production individually. We needed a global vision of the projects, starting from a high level plan,” said José Formigli, Petrobras’ Executive Director of E&P, speaking of the primary plan for the development of the pre-salt at the Santos Basin, the Plansal, which was created in 2008.

Petrobras’ P-55 Floating Production Unit (FPU), the largest and the first of this kind entirely built in Brazil, is on its way to the Roncador Field, Campos Basin, where it will be installed in a water depth of 1,790 metres. The column stabilized semi-submersible has a capacity of 180,000 bopd and 6,000,000 cu m of gas. The unit is classed by Bureau Veritas. BV group companies also provided a wide range of verification and support services which made the major project possible.

To understand how ABS and DNV participate in Brazil’s complex and challenging Maritime and O&G industries, MR spoke to ABS’s João Carlos Ferreira , DNV’s Tommy Bjørnsen and their colleagues in Rio de Janeiro. The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) is a non-profit classification society founded in 1862. ABS has been present in Brazil for more than 40 years, with more than 200 employees distributed between six offices in Brazil. “We have been providing classification services to the offshore industry longer than any other class society, and we are the current market leader in worldwide MODU classification and also market leaders in floating production units (FPI)…

Petrobras CEO welcomed U.S. Vice-President and diplomats to the company's Research Center (Cenpes) in Rio de Janeiro. The company's CEO, Maria das Graças Silva Foster, welcomed the U.S. vice-president, Joe Biden, along with the US ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon, and the US consul general in Rio de Janeiro, John Creamer. The group held a 30-minute closed meeting, which was also attended by Cenpes executive manager Marcos Assayag, advisor to the CEO André Garcez Ghirardi and Brazilian Foreign Affairs Ministry (Itamaraty) representative William Santos.

New discoveries of giant oil and gas field discoveries offshore Brazil have operators venturing into deeper water while committing expanded E&P budgets for developments in frontier regions. The Campos Basin remains the greatest focus of exploratory activity, with the Santos Basin to the south and Espirito Santo Basin to the north also seeing activity. Ship-shaped floating production, storage and off-loading (FPSO) vessels remain the preferred development option for these frontier prospects, with ABS the leading classification society of choice for FPSO conversions for offshore Brazil, says João Carlos Pacheco, ABS Brazil country manager.