Our Holdings Business Area hosts our innovation and holdings company. It has sponsored successful industrial waste treatment initiatives and received a recognition at industry level for closed circle recycling of drilling mud and damaged soil. We have further invested in nanobacteria water treatment.

Within another segment in the oil and gas industry, we have invested and become co-proprietary of a conceptual project which has reached advanced stage for a solution that helps considerably lower the CO2 emissions and reduce the oilspill risk exposure in oil offloading operations offshore.

In partnership with Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and their Laboratório de Ondas e Correntes (LOC), our partner Jairo Bastos de Araújo has created, and we helped develop a solution for the offshore Brazilian oil offloading (tanker lifting) operations.

Offshore oil production with the employment of FPSO (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading) units faces the challenge of increasing well volumes, processing, and storage capacity and ultimately oil offloading and transportation. Following the natural activity development in some oil fields, the number of spread moored FPSOs and the employment of Dynamic Positioning Shuttle Tankers increased, however represent altogether a bottleneck for the production capacity and considerable transportation cost increment. The need to implement alternatives for the use of larger and conventional tankers is evident, and several attempts and use of technology are being tested and proposed. Our concept presents preliminary numerical and cost analysis of an innovative Oil Loading Terminal (OLT) for deep water, which aims to reduce the number of tanker lifting operations offshore, by doing so cutting considerable the number of vessels employed, the lower IFO and MGO (fossil fuels) used in the transportation activity helping reduce the CO2 emissions by half per ton transported, as well as the risk exposure related to the oil transit and transshipment between vessels offshore and near shore.

Based on field data, metocean studies and extensive practical experience, our OLT should allow direct offloading from the FPSOs onto conventional shuttle tankers including VLCCs in the Brazilian coast, a solution that as set standard and employed in other areas in the world, i.e. the coast of West Africa, is not possible in Brazil due to surface conditions at sea especially in the Campos and Santos basins. Our OLT concept allows the transfer of oil from an FPSO to a conventional tanker moored in CALM Buoy through submerged oil offloading lines (OOLs) supported by a tethered submerged buoy. The conventional tanker will receive the oil through a floating hose string.

The cornerstone of our OLT concept is the subsurface buoy application to support the OLLs and consequently de-coupling the FPSO and CALM Buoy motions simultaneously. As a result, the OLLs loads and fatigue efforts under the CALM Buoy also decrease. Our study evaluates an OLT specific conception for the Brazilian offshore pre-salt area and results related to the numerical analysis carried out are presented considering one submerged buoy connected to a FPSO and CALM Buoy via flexible offloading lines respectively. The results appoint to a technically feasible solution that can be complementarily laboratory and field tested. Further, the solution cost impact has been assessed and initial figures demonstrate that the final testing, construction and installation of one system will need investment that cost a fraction of tanker lifting costs currently requiring Ship-to-Ship oil transfers.

The economies assessed with the use of this innovative solution include total avoidance of Ship-to-Ship costs; cuts transportation cost per ton in up to 50% (fifty percent) and likewise emissions and risk exposure, eliminates offloading bottlenecks allowing better use of FPSO storage and plant processing capacity, and ultimately decreases the number of tankers offloading operations with considerable benefit to operational safety.