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The Mass Production of Platform Hulls

Petrobras has launched an undertaking, currently being constructed, which will make the company the first mass producer of FPSO and semisubmersible platform hulls in the world. In addition, it will revitalize the Brazilian shipbuilding industry and will stimulate the Brazilian economy. This will be the Rio Grande dry dock complex.

The dry dock complex will revitalize the Brazilian offshore industry

“This is an important undertaking,” according to the manager of Shipbuilding Enterprises in the Petrobras Engineering area, Alexandre Lugtenburg de Garcia. “In the city of Rio Grande, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, this complex will operate as a site for the construction, conversion, and repair of production and drilling platforms in an area of about 500,000m². It will include workshops equipped to process up to 12,000 tons of steel per year. It will also have a steel structure, known as a gantry crane, with 130 meters of open span and a height of 80 meters that will allow the lifting of loads up to 600 tons. There will be two yards of approximately 100,000m² each, which will be used for the construction of offshore modules. The complex will house a dry dock measuring 350m long, 130m wide and 14m deep, as well as a 130 meter dry dock floating gate, which will allow the flooding or the draining of the dock, the entry of vessels for repair or conversion, and the exit of ships or hulls to the sea. There will also be two finishing wharfs measuring 150 and 350m, respectively,” he says.

Budgeted at US$ 265 million, the complex, to be constructed on land leased for 10 years, will be owned by Petrobras and the company WTorre during this period, with 80% held by Petrobras and 20% by WTorre, which will operate the complex. At the end of this period the complex will be transferred totally to WTorre and, given that it will possess an infrastructure for the manufacture of entire FPSOs, semisubmersible and monocolumn platforms, or only the hulls, it will be able to render services to Petrobras and any other customers.

The complex will provide Petrobras with significant gains, especially considering that the offshore market is currently overheated, shipyards around the world are overburdened with work, and, in Brazil, there are no shipyards equipped to construct platforms, be it for the width or the depth of the dock. “The company will benefit from reduced costs due to economies of scale in the purchase of raw materials. It will be able to negotiate favorable prices by purchasing in Brazil and in large quantities, with no competition of comparable size. It will reduce importation. It will receive fiscal incentives from the Rio Grande do Sul government, which has every interest in hosting an enterprise which will stimulate the local economy. The demand for platform hulls will be met, as components of the construction process can be fabricated in various Brazilian shipyards, but the hulls, for the moment, can only be made in the Rio Grande complex or overseas. Finally, the construction time will be reduced because there will be no need to send Brazilian vessels to Asia to have their hulls adapted for FPSOs and semisubmersible platforms in China, Korea, or Singapore,” says the manager of E&P and Maritime Transportation, Roberto Gonçalves.

Brazil will also benefit from the enterprise. “In line with the Brazilian government’s Program for the Mobilization of the National Oil and Natural Gas Industry, PROMIMP, the complex will revitalize the goods and services industry in the city of Rio Grande and will make it a shipbuilding center. It will provide a new stimulus to the Brazilian shipbuilding industry in general and will enable Brazil to carry out services which up to now have been contracted only overseas. It will increase the national content in Petrobras platforms. Besides, it will generate employment and income, which will contribute to the nation’s development,” emphasizes Pedro Barusco, executive manager of the Petrobras Engineering area.

According to Lugtenburg de Garcia, just in the construction phase of the dock, about 1,500 direct jobs were created. In addition, another 3,500 are anticipated when the first service is implemented in the complex – the assembly of the P-55 hull and the construction of tubing and auxiliary structures. The work will begin in 2008 and will be completed in 2011, when the platform will be installed in the Roncador field in the Campos Basin.

Other projects to be carried out in the complex are, for example, the remodeling of the P-17 semisubmersible platform, the construction of the hull of the TLWP (tension leg wellhead platform) type P-61, and the construction of a series of four or six standardized hulls for FPSOs. The idea is, after all, to make maximum use of the space.

The dock should be completed in February, 2009. At that time a benchmark for the Brazilian shipbuilding and offshore industries will have been achieved, and Petrobras will have proved it transforms challenges into opportunities.