On Thursday, May 9, Petrobras ended its participation in the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), in Houston (USA), with a technical session on subsea technology systems. In addition to the ongoing projects and those undergoing testing, the Company presented the outlook for this segment. The OTC is the world’s largest offshore oil exploration and production event.
The key advantages of these systems are the anticipated production, the increase in the recovery factor (percentage of oil and gas that can be extracted from reservoirs) and the increase in the processing capacity of platforms. This last benefit exists because, for subsea water and oil separators, the water produced (extracted along with the oil) is re-injected back into the reservoir while still on the seabed and, thus, the platform capacity is mainly used for oil production.
Fábio Alves Albuquerque , equipment engineer in the Subsea Equipment Technology Sector at Cenpes (Petrobras’ Research Center) addressed the future prospects of these technologies. He said that one of the company’s focuses is the development and availability of these technologies for their application. “For this purpose, Petrobras’ main goal is to work together with suppliers and other operators”.
The session was led by Marcos Morais, Procap’s coordinator – Visão Futuro (Future Vision, Petrobras’ deepwater technological development program), and had the participation of other company technicians. Petrobras’ technicians also held two sessions yesterday (May 8) on underwater electric energy and on the advances in composite pipe systems for offshore applications.