Final Manufacturing News

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.

FMC Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: FTI) announced that it has been awarded a contract by Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) (NYSE:PBRA) to supply a subsea separation system for the Marlim field, located in the Campos Basin, offshore Brazil. The contract is valued at approximately $90m in revenue to FMC Technologies. FMC's scope of supply consists of a subsea separation and pumping system. The subsea separation module will separate heavy oil, gas, sand and water at a water depth of approximately 2,950 feet (900 meters). The system will apply FMC's separation and sand management technologies, utilizing a novel pipe separator design, licensed and developed in cooperation with StatoilHydro.

The Manitowoc Company, Inc. has reached an agreement with Valcovna profilov a.s. for the development of a crane manufacturing facility in Saris, Slovakia. The facility, which will be refurbished and re-equipped, will serve as the final manufacturing and assembly site for Grove, Potain, and Manitowoc cranes being delivered to customers in East European markets, particularly in Russia and the CIS. The company expects to begin production from the Saris facility in late 2007. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but Manitowoc is revising its 2007 capital expenditures guidance from $70 million to $85 million for the full year as a result of this acquisition and other capacity initiatives in its Crane Group.