Petrobras wants to contract platform outside of Brazil to be installed in the Libra area, the big bet on the pre-salt Santos Basin. The company requested the National Agency of Petroleum (ANP), the release of the obligation to hire Brazilian suppliers for the construction of the vessel, with the argument that prices in Brazil are much higher. If ANP consents they can award the work to Asia and still have access to financing.
Libra is the first area of pre-salt auctioned and administered by a consortium of companies in the sharing system, in which part of the gains is passed on to the Union. Led by Petrobras, the consortium also brings together the Anglo-Dutch Shell, France’s Total and the Chinese NCC and CNOOC.
In the first half of the yeat, Petrobras invited bids to contract platform to be installed in Libra by 2020, when it will start producing oil and natural gas. Four Brazilian suppliers submitted proposals – Modec, SBM, BW Offshore and Bluewater / Queiroz Galvão consortium. Only Modec was not disqualified. Still, Petrobras claims to ANP that the amount charged is much higher than could be hired abroad.
The contract signed by the British consortium with the government of former President Dilma Rousseff anticipates “prefer to hire Brazilian suppliers whenever their offerings present price, delivery time and quality more favorable or equivalent to foreign suppliers.” But since the economic and Petrobras crisis and shipyards began to be investigated in Operation Car Wash, the local content policy was questioned by oil companies, including Petrobras.
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