Ultratec News

Two Brazilian maintenance workers died as a result of a toxic gas leak at an offshore oil rig operated by the state oil firm Petrobras. "The workers died when doing maintenance work on a drainage tank at the B-37 platform on the Marlim block in the Campos basin on Wednesday evening," said a Petrobras spokesman, adding that the workers were employees of Ultratec engineering firm. He said it was yet unclear how the leak had occurred and what gas caused the deaths. There were no other casualties and there was no damage to the platform. "The leak was stopped at the same moment on Wednesday. A Petrobras commission is investigating the case." Campos Basin accounts for nearly 80 percent of Brazil's overall crude oil output.

IZAR has been awarded a contract to build a 900,000bb FPSO (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading) unit for Belgium's company Exmar Offshore. The unit is scheduled to be delivered at the end of January 2003 and is intended to be operated by Exmar at the Aquitaine field, in the Mediterranean sea, off Libya. The design is characterized by moderate dimensions such as 210.6 m length, 44 m breadth, 23 m depth and 16.5 m design draft if, compared to its huge 900,000bb storage capacity. This newbuilding will actually be the largest ever delivered by the Spanish builder in terms of capacity despite having constructed several large FPSO units in the past…