The situation has been critical at the Rio Grande naval complex for some time, but the horizon does not bring good news. The resumption of the construction of P-71, which was one of the local hopes, is not in Petrobras’ plans, according to President Pedro Parente, who alleged “no use” for the platform – initially expected to operate from 2018 onwards in the northwest of Iara, in the pre-salt of the Santos Basin, under the Onerous Assignment Regime.
The executive also said that Petrobras has given funds to the Ecovix shipyard to run for a year in search of new investors in order to maintain the activities, in addition to indicating that the company no longer intends to build platform hulls in Brazil, leaving to the shipyards the integration of the units with the modules.
Here are some excerpts from the interview below:
– Rio Grande Complex
“I want to show solidarity with everyone who is suffering from the consequences of the disastrous policies that have been practiced in the past. (…) I’m very sorry. But the relevant issue here is exactly what it is possible to do to reconcile Petrobras’ needs with the delivery capacity of what is produced in the country. Unfortunately, the history of naval production destined for Petrobras, specifically in the case of the platforms, was bad for the company. I would ask everyone to understand that average delays of three years, prices above stipulated causes a huge problem for Petrobras. ”
“We made a deal recently with the people who were running Ecovix, and we were concerned about giving resources to the company itself to give this shipyard time to try to recover. So that it would be able to operate in a year, to see if it was possible to find interested parties who can re-invest in the sector. ”
– Strategic mistakes of Petrobrás
“There are two important questions. The first is: would they even be able to deliver within the promised deadlines? And those deadlines were promised. The evidence we have gathered is that there was no condition to deliver on these deadlines.
The other issue we have is: it makes sense – or made sense – the large number of yards that were encouraged to set up in the country, knowing that the shipbuilding industry is very competitive and works with high quality in other countries of the world ?
Regarding the delivery time, it clearly did not work and this failed, bringing many problems for Petrobras. ”
“You mean the new platforms will be made abroad?”
“I am trying to say that we are working under the leasing regime, in which the responsibility for the deadline is for the contracted companies. And when we establish this contract, there is also a demand for local content. This happens to be a decision of these companies, exactly according to the term in which they commit to deliver and the request of local content.
It is important to mention that there are other things that we can do in Brazilian shipyards, which is the integration of platforms. Not necessarily build the hull, where we already had the biggest problems, but doing the integration of the platforms. The hull alone is not prepared to become a production platform. For this he needs to receive about 22 systems in the topside. Generators, separation systems etc. After the integration of these systems, it becomes a platform.
We are able to build part of these systems in Brazil and integration is done in Brazilian shipyards. So it’s not just the construction. The big problem was the construction of the hulls, with delays that have harmed us a lot “.
– Is the retaking of the H-71 hull discarded?
“I do not like to give inaccurate information, so I’d like to confirm, but I have the impression that it does. Because we do not have use for this platform. How can I explain to my shareholders, since most of them is the Brazilian society, that I am going to invest in an equipment that costs billions of dollars and that I do not need.”
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